


far off into the yellow wood

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 1950/60s, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Light Angst, Marriage of Convenience, Non-SHIELD AU, Unplanned Pregnancy, slight The Versions of Us AU but no book spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:26:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23706844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: "She hates the way he says it -expecting. She was expecting a lot of things: a job, a husband, freedom from this dull house with its dull ways. She was expecting to have accomplished numerous things by the time she had to worry about something like this. What she was not expecting was a baby."June 1958. Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons are merely acquaintances, friends of friends. It only takes one night and then everything changes.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 87
Kudos: 140





	1. and both that morning equally lay

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I am so so excited to be sharing this that I have been working on since November. It came to me after re-reading The Versions of Us and is inspired by it but doesn't follow the book at all so you really don't have to worry about spoilers if you're planning on reading it. 
> 
> It's a story in a few parts, and it's slightly angsty at some points (I mean it's me so whenever is something not angsty?) but it's also got its good moments and it will have a happy ending (I promise).
> 
> I hope you enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

**June 1958.**

“Can’t you stay?”

Fitz’s eyes are warm and blue as they peer out from beneath rumpled bedsheets. They melt her heart and she softens a little from where she fastens her shoes at the edge of the bed. She touches his face with her hand, marvelling, not for the first time, how smooth the skin is beneath her fingertips.

“You know that I can’t. I have to go to a meeting.”

A meeting that she forgot all about until she awoke this morning, pressed tightly to Fitz’s chest and saw the alarm clock on his bedside table. How funny, that the night before she had completely forgotten about what comes the morning after.

“Forget the meeting,” he tells her, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Stay here. With me.”

“I’d love nothing more,” she sighs because she would indeed love nothing more. “But I have to go. They’ll be expecting me.”

The light is low and he looks at her with such warmth in his eyes that she feels she could turn molten right here, right now. Before last night she had looked at him as only an acquaintance, perhaps even a friend at a stretch, and she had imagined he had looked at her the same. Now the world has tilted on its axis, and nothing is as it was before.

“Will I see you again?”

The question is asked lightly, but she sees the shadow that crosses his face. Oh, Fitz. Surely he knew, when they came back together last night, slightly tipsy, pressing themselves to each other as though there could simply be not even an inch of space between them, that this could not be a permanent arrangement. They are so very different people, from two very different backgrounds. Their lives are destined to go in entirely different directions. To start something now would be the act of lunacy. Surely Fitz knows that.

“I don’t know,” she tells him honestly, not having the heart to do anything other. “I’m going back to my parents’ tomorrow night and then after…” she shrugs her shoulders. “Well, who knows?”

“The entire world at your feet,” he says, smiling but his eyes are sad. They are very expressive, she has noted. She can see every thought within them. “I’m going back to Glasgow the day after next.”

“Then perhaps we might never see each other again.”

“Oh, I don’t know. When you’re a famous writer you might take it upon yourself to invite me to one of your fancy dinner parties that I’m sure you’ll be throwing every night.”

She laughs. Has she really been that transparent? The famous writer part is her secret dream, something she craves to an almost obsessive degree. The dinner parties would just be a bonus. “I might just do that, Fitz. But what about you? When you’re a fancy lawyer living in the big city in your big house, will you even have time for me?”

“Jemma Simmons,” he says solemnly. “I shall always have time for you.”

There’s such an ache, about the size of her first, that nestles in amongst her ribs. It settles there and is present even as she finishes dressing, as she kisses him on the cheek goodbye. It’s present as she takes her meeting with the other writers of the student newspaper, making it hard to laugh at the jokes and be sad during the goodbyes. It’s present as she packs up her tiny room, belongings going neatly inside her suitcase. It’s there as she boards her train, as she tries to very hard to prepare herself for life back at her parents’ estate.

The ache is there so long that it becomes a part of her, as much a part as her heart or her brain, and soon she becomes so accustomed to it that she can’t imagine how she ever lived in a time where there wasn’t an ache, where there wasn’t a time that she missed Leopold Fitz.

-x-

He was a friend of a friend at first. There was another girl who wrote for the student newspaper, a tall, blonde American who was loud and fun and held herself with a confidence Jemma envied. Her name was Barbara, but she went by Bobbi and dared anyone to do otherwise. This girl cornered her one day after a meeting and told her she should come to the union with her group of friends.

“Oh, no. I don’t think so,” Jemma had stammered, trying to stay cool but failing miserably as the heat crept to her cheeks. “I have rather a lot of work to do.”

Bobbi hadn’t seemed fussed, and there was a twinkle in her eye when she said. “And? There’s later for work. Come on, Jemma. Just an hour, two tops. You’ll be back in your rooms before you know it.”

Fitz had been there, at that first meeting, though she hadn’t known his name then. He was the quiet boy, neat and tidy, who stood at the edge of this rambunctious crowd that Bobbi had assembled. A little pasty, but handsome, and with blue eyes that were soft and kind. Jemma had liked the look of him almost immediately and had been on her way to say hello, ask him who he might be, before she was swept off, waylaid by someone else, and forgot almost entirely about him.

Jemma Simmons has always prided herself on never getting too emotional about things. She has never been one to be tied down by such fiddly things as feelings that can seem so sure in one moment and slip through your fingers the next. So, it’s with great confusion that she sits in the familiar rooms of her parent’s house, in her familiar seat by the window, feeling so confused and unsure and completely and utterly unable to forget about him now.

-x-

In another life, she wonders if she should have said something then, on that first night. Perhaps it would have changed the outcome entirely.

-x-

The Summer rolls on, ever so slowly, and living at home that no longer seems like home becomes intolerable.

“Darling, as you sure you’re feeling alright?” Her mother asks, for seemingly the tenth time today. “You’re looking quite white.”

“I’m fine,” Jemma snaps, patience wearing thin. “It’s just tiredness and this dreadful Summer cold. I’m sure it’ll pass soon.”

Her mother makes a noise in the back of her throat. “What a long cold it has been. If you’re not better by the end of the week then I’m calling for the doctor. Those dark circles keep getting bigger and bigger.”

Jemma has been feeling rather off lately. She’s sure it’s just down to her writing into the wee hours of the morning, the usual strains that come from being in close proximity to her mother and father, and the dreadful weather they’ve been having so far. All the same, her mother’s promise to call out the doctor has her feeling nervous in a way she can’t explain, and nothing seems to quieten her queasy stomach.

More than once she picks up her pen for a different reason, and every time she puts it back down again. For a writer, it’s amazing how easily she suddenly has nothing to say.

-x-

The doctor is an older gentleman, around sixty, with shockingly white hair and a moustache that has been twirled at the ends. He has a soft Welsh accent and a leather bag and reminds her of a grandfather she has never had. He delivers his diagnosis gently, but even still it hits her as though she has been punched.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s simply not possible.”

“My dear,” the doctor sighs. “You can say it as many times as you like but that doesn’t change the fact that you are expecting.”

She hates the way he says it - e _xpecting._ She was expecting a lot of things: a job, a husband, freedom from this dull house with its dull ways. She was expecting to have accomplished numerous things by the time she had to worry about something like this. What she was not expecting was a baby.

“I had plans,” she says weakly and regrets it as soon as she does. It’s not the doctor’s fault, after all. He’s not the one who got her into this mess.

“Well, you know what they say about the best-laid of them,” he says, gathering up his things and putting them in his bag. “They often go awry.”

She glares at him, unappreciative of his wit. “And what do you suggest I do?”

“Miss Simmons, I’m simply a doctor, not a priest or any other sort of figure you can turn to for absolution. I shall provide you with care of the highest standard, but I’m afraid that’s all I can do.”

She bites her lip. “Will you tell my parents?”

He shakes his head. “No. You are twenty-one, not some foolish child. That, my dear, is up to you.”

“I’m unmarried-”

“I’m aware,” he says, gravely. “But I’m afraid babies don’t really care about all of that.”

Babies might not but society certainly does. Her parents most certainly do. There’s an urge to be sick and she has to swallow it down.

The doctor goes to leave but before he opens the door and gives scent to the wolves, he gives her a warm look that makes her feel better for just a moment.

“You’re not the first unmarried mother, and you won’t be the last. This is not the end of the world. Call me out again when you’re ready.” He nods his head once and goes.

She simply sits on her bed in shock, unable to comprehend anything clearly. She’s pregnant. She’s twenty-one. She has a degree in English Literature. She’s slept with one man in her entire life. She’s unmarried, not even close to being so. She’s pregnant.

She had so many dreams. She was going to write a novel and move into a grand flat in London and perhaps she’d travel the world someday. She’d host dinner parties that people would kill for invitations to and when people saw her in the street, they would be filled with nothing but envy and longing because she was Jemma Simmons, an extraordinary writer and she had made it.

_The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry._

That’s the English translation, she thinks dully, thoughts poking at her through the haze in her mind. The original is from a poem by Robert Burns.

_The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men_

_Gang aft agley_

A Scottish poem, with awkward syllables, hard to get the tongue around if you’re not used to them. She’s never heard the poem told by a Scot before except…

_Oh._

He’ll have to be told and she’ll have to do it now before she loses the bottle. When he gave her his address, hastily scribbled on the back of another envelope and pressed into her hand before she’d left his room, he can’t have imagined it would have been used for this. There’s a taste of regret in Jemma’s mouth and no amount of swallowing will make it go away.

She picks up her pen, pulls out a sheet of paper, scribbling before her mother comes in. At least, now, she has something to say.

-x-

She wonders what would happen if, in another life, she didn’t tell him. If one day they chanced upon each other in the street, years and years later and he looked at their child and looked at her. Would he see anything, she wonders? Would he know? Or would he assume that she had moved on, as he would have undoubtedly with his own life?

Would he nod? Would he smile? Or would he simply walk on by?

-x-

She writes that she will meet him in Cambridge, and that’s exactly what she does.

The city is bustling as it always is, people rushing to and from, not even a sign of laziness on this uncomfortably hot Summer’s day. She gets there early and goes to the café they have agreed to meet at. It will give her time to look at the notecards she has in her bag, unable as she was to read them on the train, the combination of words and motion of the train making her feel sicker than ever.

Cambridge. A trek for her, even more so for him, but it had to be here. This city is where it began after all. Cambridge was meant to be a freedom, a dip of her toe into the great wide world. Instead, she has left even more trapped than ever and the chances that are slipping through her fingers before she even truly got to feel them is the worst part of it all.

Fitz arrives at exactly twelve and it’s not hard to miss his grin as he approaches. Her heart soars for a second as she forgets.

“I expected you to be late,” she remarks, hoping he doesn’t notice the tremor in her voice. “Aren’t you always late for everything?”

“I came down yesterday.” His accent has gotten thicker. She wonders if he misses home when he’s away. “Stayed with a friend.”

“Of course.” She is staying in a hotel. Her parents think she is here for a job interview and to meet a friend. How she wishes that were the truth. “How have you been, Fitz?”

“Good,” he says smiling, eyes as warm as she remembers. “Got a job. Not very well paying but I don’t mind. I’m thinking about getting a flat – some friends have a room going spare.” He laughs. “They want to get a dog. How have you been?”

“Also good. I’ve been applying to magazines and things…” but she trails off, unable to finish. Hearing him talk about his future is hard, of course, but talking about her own is worse. If he so chooses, he can walk away from this and still have that job and the flat and even the dog. It’s not quite the same for her.

“Are you alright, Jemma?” He asks, leaning across the table slightly. She must look a fright.

“Actually, Fitz, I’m… well, I have something to share with you, but before I do, I’d just like you to promise me that you won’t say anything for a minute afterwards.”

The smile has dimmed slightly and he nods. “Alright.”

Over and over again she has wondered what the best way to break the news is. There have been many different scenarios she has either written down or left in her head and each has been abandoned. How do you deliver such world-stopping news as this?

“I’m pregnant.”

Apparently just as it is.

For a second, she stops breathing, and she wonders if he does, too. Unable to look at him in those first few moments, she stares at the table.

He says nothing for a minute as she had asked him to, but then the minute stretches into two, then three and finally she can bear it no longer. She looks at him. His skin has turned even paler than a moment ago, and he has clasped his hands together on the tabletop, staring into them intently.

“Fitz?” She prompts, gently. “Are you alright?”

“I just-I don’t. How?” He looks at her plaintively. “It was once and we used, um, you know.” He flushes red. “I’m so sorry.”

Despite the graveness of the situation they find themselves in, she laughs. “Oh, Fitz. It’s not your fault. We were both there and if anything, I was the one who propositioned you.” She reaches out and puts her hand over his. “I’m not going to make you do anything, you know. I thought you should know, but I don’t need anything.”

His voice is hoarse; it is as if he is being strangled. “What are you saying? Of course, you do.”

“No,” she says, retracting her hand. “I do not. I’m quite capable of this by myself.”

Finally, his face has some colour to it, a slight reddening. She doesn’t know him well enough to label it, but she thinks it could be anger.

“So you don’t need me then, is that it? You’ve got it all figured out already.”

“Fitz, no, that’s not what I meant. All I meant was that I’m not expecting much from you.”

It’s the wrong word to use, and not what she meant at all, but it’s too late. The devastation that it wreaks it written all over Fitz’s face.

“Wow,” he whispers. “Good to know.”

“Ugh,” she huffs, thinking that they’ve both done the same thing and said nothing of what they both actually meant. “I think we both need a bit of time-”

“You might say that.”

“-so here’s the address of my hotel and the room I’m staying in. I’ll be there until eleven o’clock tomorrow. It’s up to you whether you come or not.”

She writes the details on a spare notecard and places it down on the table with more force than she means to, walking away immediately after and trying not to cry. _Dammit._ She wasn’t afraid to tell him, as strange as it was. Nervous, yes, but not afraid, and now it seems it’s all gone to hell.

That night she can’t sleep, and she tosses and turns in amongst the comfortable sheets, nausea keeping her awake. Nothing seems to help, not the plans she writes up in her notebook or the book she brought to soothe her mind. It’s a truly miserable night, made worse by the fact that she can’t see an end to them anytime soon.

The next morning, Fitz knocks on her hotel room door with a ring in his hand.

It’s early, just after eight, and he’s lucky that she’s been awake and dressed since six. He doesn’t seem to have had an easy night of it himself; his hair sticks up at odd angles and there are dark circles under his eyes. Her heart jumps at the sight.

“My father isn’t, well, he isn’t winning any awards any time soon,” he says, jumping straight in after she invites him inside. “And I know how much that hurts and I don’t want to be like that for my child; just some ghost in a picture or that disapproving shadow at their shoulder for the rest of their life.”

It hits Jemma, not for the first time, how little she knows about Fitz. They were acquaintances, really, friends of friends, and now there’s a child linking them, no matter what, for the rest of their lives.

“I’m not making you do anything, truly, and I don’t want to be the person who tells you what to do, Jemma. It’s just I know – can only imagine – how hard it would be to be an unmarried mother and I don’t want that for you. Not when it’s not just your responsibility.” He holds out the ring. “It’s up to you, but the offer of marriage is there if you want it. If you don’t that’s okay, too, but no matter what I would like to be involved.” His blue eyes bore into hers; it’s almost as though they reach right into her soul. If she believed in such a ridiculous notion that is. “Please.”

Her heart softens, turns molten within her chest. The ache intensifies. “Of course, Fitz. Of course. I would never keep your child from you, married or unmarried. I promise.”

The most intense declaration she has ever made in her entire life and she makes it to the man with the pasty face and warm blue eyes. A promise she intends to keep.

“Good.” His smile is the purest thing of all; she’ll treasure it in her mind for a long while to come. “Thank you.” He shuffles where he stands. “And uh, about the ring?”

About the ring? She still doesn’t know. To be unmarried is an awful thing for some, but to be trapped in a marriage without love is worse for her. She likes Fitz, truly, and he makes her laugh and he’s kind and smart but does she love him? One day maybe she could, but for now, she barely knows him.

Yet it’s not just her she has to think of now; it’s the little almond-shaped baby growing inside her that also demands her attention. To be an unmarried mother would be challenging for her, but not impossible to deal with. For her child, though, it could be a different story. What rights and privileges would she be denying them? Would they already be at a disadvantage before they have even drawn their first breath?

There’s also another reason, a slightly less pressing issue but one that is much more tangible. Her parents, who are not as open-minded as they might believe themselves to be. Her family, her friends, that high society lot who would scorn her and cast her aside if they knew. How wonderful to be able to tell her parents that she’s in the family way and say, _but it’s alright, mum. It’s fine. I have it all sorted. Look, his name is Fitz._

Love is important but it’s not everything. She nods at Fitz and gives him an almost bewildered smile. “Alright then. Let’s get married.”


	2. oh i kept the first for another day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The reality has turned out to be something quite different. The wedding shall be here in the village because Jemma can’t travel very well now without feeling terribly sick. It will be in the church, but only because the minister has been more or less bribed into submission after many lectures about her situation. There will be no great extravagant dress – it will be loose to cover the growing scandal as much as they can – and no lengthy article of the whole affair. This isn’t something to be advertised. The family will talk about it, of course, but for an entirely different reason."
> 
> Jemma has some visitors. And a wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, me again! Thank you all so very much for the kind comments and kudos and likes and reblogs and all that jazz. You're really kind! I hope you enjoy chapter 2 as much.

Hunter corners her in the garden.

Her parents’ estate has a wonderful garden, a place where one could walk for hours and never get tired of the beauty for it changes every so often. Most of it is manicured to perfection; lawns where every blade of grass is the exact same length, trees that's branches wouldn’t dare grow into their neighbors’ territory and rose bushes where every bloom is flawless, a heaven-like perfection.

There’s a corner, though, that her parents have always told the gardeners to leave untouched. Tucked away behind some palm trees, its red-bricked high walls and overgrown bushes have provided a safe haven for Jemma all her life. This garden within a garden, with its knee-high grass and weeds between the paving stones and rickety bench that could buckle at any moment, is where she truly feels at home.

She has spent most of her days here, ever since she managed to drum up the courage to tell her parents. It went as well as expected, and while their faces are still dour and her mother still sniffs into a handkerchief and moans about lost opportunities, the fact that she has a fiancé on standby has meant that she is not quite a fallen woman to them yet.

It’s suffocating to be in their presence, to be in the house where the servants eye her as if to say _you’re below even us now_ and her mother can be heard exclaiming _what shall I tell the family, Gordon? What shall they think?_ So Jemma escapes to her garden with a blanket and her notebooks and stays out there until either the weather or dinner dictates that she should go in.

Usually she is alone, but today that is not the case as she hears Hunter fighting with the tree branches on the other side of the wall. A cousin of a kind, and unsure of what direction to take his life, he has been staying with them for years.

“Bloody trees,” he grumbles when he finally comes into view. “They’ve scratched me all up and down my arm.”

There are three very long, very red scratches running from elbow to wrist on his arm. Jemma has to hide her smile. “I’ve never had any bother with them.”

“Maybe they like you. That’s why they let you in.” He comes over and with only the barest of doubtful looks at the bench, he sits next to her on it. He nudges her with his elbow. “Out here again?”

She shrugs. “It’s better than being in there.”

“Writing again?”

“It’s better than anything else.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought you’ve got a wedding to plan.”

She shakes her head, hiding her face in her long hair. “It’s barely a wedding.”

“Your mum thinks otherwise.”

“Really? Because those were her exact words.”

Her mother has been planning Jemma’s wedding since she could first walk. It was to be a huge affair in a city church, with at least seven bridesmaids and a groom who had a title or something of a monetary equivalent. It was to be in the newspapers, and the family was to be so _envious_ they would talk of nothing else for years.

The reality has turned out to be something quite different. The wedding shall be here in the village because Jemma can’t travel very well now without feeling terribly sick. It will be in the church, but only because the minister has been more or less bribed into submission after many lectures about her _situation._ There will be no great extravagant dress – it will be loose to cover the growing scandal as much as they can – and no lengthy article of the whole affair. This isn’t something to be advertised. The family will talk about it, of course, but for an entirely different reason.

“She’s shocked, Jemma,” Hunter tells her. “We all are.”

“No one more so than I, I can assure you,” she quips. Everyone talking about how difficult it is for them is grating. They can turn their backs. She has no such luxury.

“If anyone was to get someone pregnant, they thought it would be me. Not their precious Jemma with her degree from Cambridge and all that.”

She knows this to be true, for her mother had said _we expected this from Hunter, Jemma, but not you, with your Cambridge degree and all that._

The fact that she has disappointed them makes her feel sicker than she already does. “Well, I should hate to be predictable.”

“With a Scot, no less! And not even a fancy one at that. One from Glasgow.”

“That’s not very fair,” she protests, eager to come to Fitz’s defence. “I wouldn’t expect you to think like that.”

“I don’t,” he tells her. “Our family does. You’ve really gone and done it.”

“His father’s a lawyer.”

“But not one that we know,” he counters. “Though it’s better than a dock worker, I’ll give you that.”

“And Fitz has a Law degree, too. He has a brain. Quite a marvellous one, actually.”

“Didn’t think to use it though, did he?” Hunter shakes his head, a sound coming from the back of his throat. “I could kill him.”

“Hunter!” Jemma swots at his arm, shocked. “Why would you do that?”

“For getting you in this mess in the first place.”

Jemma sighs, tired of repeating the same thing over and over. “It takes two to make a baby, Lance Hunter. I would have thought even you would know that.”

“I know, but-”

“But nothing. It was a mutual decision, a foolish one in hindsight, but mutual nonetheless.”

“Alright.” Hunter holds up his hands in a mock gesture of surrender. “A mutual decision. Jemma Simmons doesn’t let anyone take advantage of her. I get it.”

Hunter is soothing, a balm to her soul. His appearance to not take life as seriously as she does can make him infuriating to be around, but also calming in a way that she doesn’t understand. It’s almost as if nothing can be that terrible if Lance Hunter isn’t worried about it yet.

“When’s Fitz coming down?”

“The week before the wedding.”

“And when is the wedding?”

She frowns, forehead puckering as she struggles to get a grip on the date. “Two weeks.”

“So next week then?”

“Yes,” she sighs, too tired to contemplate the inevitable change. “Next week.”

“I wonder if I’ll like him.”

There is no wonder on her part. “I think you will.”

She allows her head to fall against his arm, the bench groaning as she does so. His arm comes around her shoulder. At least he hasn’t fallen out with her.

“Would you really kill him?” She asks after the silence calms her down. “If I wanted you to.”

“Especially if you wanted me to.” He squeezes her gently. “That’s what brothers are for.”

She frowns. “You aren’t my brother.”

She feels him sigh, his chest making her rise and fall with it. “Close enough, love,” he says, dropping a kiss on top of her hair. “Close enough.”

-x-

Jemma wonders what she would do in another life if she didn’t have Lance Hunter. If he had stayed with his parents while they went through their bitter divorce, or had gone to university to escape as she had. As an only child she imagines she would have been lonely. Then again, maybe not. Jemma Simmons has never been afraid of her own company; sometimes it’s the company of others she cannot bear.

-x-

Bobbi comes to stay, arriving a day before Fitz. As the one who is technically at fault for this, or so Jemma says to make herself feel better, it seems only right she should be here for the wedding.

They take a walk, lately one of the only activities that doesn’t induce severe nausea on Jemma’s part. Enquiring after each other takes up the first stretch, reminiscing the second. It’s only when they reach the Jemma’s garden that Jemma sees the true meaning of Bobbi’s visit, the reason why she’s here early.

“How are you feeling about all this, huh?”

The question is asked tenderly, but whether it be hormones or simply the enormity of it all settling in, Jemma bursts into tears. After several minutes of noisy blubbering into a conveniently supplied handkerchief she manages to recover her voice.

“I had so many dreams, Bobbi; all of these things I was going to do and now I can’t do any of them.”

Bobbi doesn’t pat her back or hold her close. Instead she just tilts her head. “Says who?”

Jemma snorts. “Come on. I’ll never be a writer. I’ll be too busy cooking dinner and changing nappies and it’ll be too late by the time I won’t be.”

“Not necessarily.” Jemma wonders if it’s an American thing, to be so dismissive of a situation that her parents, almost everyone she knows has made seem like her own personal Armageddon. “So you do it later, or you do it while you’re a wife and mother. Nothing wrong with that.”

Jemma laughs because surely this has to be a joke. How can this not be the end of the road? “Next you’ll tell me there’s nothing wrong with having a baby while I’m not married.”

Bobbi shrugs. “Nothing much wrong with that either. A mother is a mother, married or unmarried. Seems like a special thing regardless.”

 _A special thing._ Nobody has told her that. They’ve said it’s a tragedy, or it’s terrible, or it’s such a shame. For the first time in her life, and so casually, someone has called it _special._

“A special thing,” she repeats softly, trying out the words on her tongue.

“Yeah,” Bobbi agrees. “Your life’s not over, Jemma. Far from it. It might be different from the one you expected, but nobody ever gets to live life according to a plan.” She takes Jemma’s hand. “It’s going to be alright.”

For the first time since the doctor has told her that she was pregnant, Jemma actually believes that it might be. That, eventually, everything will be okay.

-x-

She used to believe Fitz hated her.

It’s a strange thought to have now that she’s having his baby, even stranger as she walks down the aisle to where he waits, but yes, there was a time that she used to leave social gatherings and flop down on her bed and wonder why, oh why, didn’t he seem to warm to her?

It was the quietness at first. Jemma was chatty, to an excessive degree she’ll admit, and whenever Bobbi invited her to group gatherings she would try and make conversation with everybody. Most would respond politely but Fitz would only nod and _hm_ and would never say anything of real consequence and when she gave up trying she always felt a bit deflated.

He was so smart, it seemed to her. Quiet and pasty though he was, but he was also handsome and _smart._ He studied law, she knew, from the meager amount of information she has managed to glean. She studied literature. To anyone else she would have argued tooth and nail that it was just as important, just as intelligent to study literature as it was law. It was a fight she was always prepared to have, except with him. There was something about him that made her subdued, that made her feel self-conscious. What if he thought she was silly? What if he told her that her dreams were nothing but the dreams of schoolchildren? What then?

It took a while but they did get there, or at least part of the way. He stopped withdrawing into himself every time she drew near and she stopped babbling on about utter nonsense to try and power through the awkwardness. He talked a bit about law and she talked a bit about writing. They liked some of the same books, a couple of the same films and they both had the same favourite bench by the water that they liked to go when they needed some time to think.

Graduation came around and they were something almost like friends. When they went out as a group, either to the union or for picnics or even to the library, Jemma didn’t mind if she ended up next to Fitz. He made her smile.

She wonders, in another life, what would have happened if they hadn’t slept together that last night before everybody left, when someone in their group had started buying drinks and hadn’t had the good sense to stop. Where would they be now? As she walks up the aisle, her stomach doing somersaults beneath her floaty dress and Fitz standing at the altar looking wonderfully handsome in his kilt and smiling nervously, and their friends and family surrounding them, all of them knowing the real reason that they’re here, she can only think of the life she might have had if she’d just done one thing differently.

She used to believe Fitz hated her and now, on a pleasantly warm day in September in a village church, with the eyes of God upon them, she takes a deep breath and becomes his wife.

-x-

Jemma’s not quite sure what she expected their bridal night to be. The last time they were together they were drunk and they were happy – it seemed as though their whole lives were ahead of them, the future a blank canvas they could paint anything they liked on. That happiness is hard to fake, and she doesn’t want to try. They’re married now, for better or worse. To start a marriage based on fakery is not something she wishes to do.

They’ve been given their own bedroom in her parents’ house, one that used to belong to her grandmother when she came to visit. It’s double the size of Jemma’s childhood one, with a massive window that looks out onto the garden, and a plush carpet. A room that Jemma’s always longed for. It is, however, absolutely freezing.

“I’m sorry this isn’t more exciting,” Jemma moans, duvet pulled up to her neck. “I just feel so sick.”

Fitz, who has just completed a perilous journey to the kitchen while avoiding the family members that have descended upon the house, brings her cup of peppermint tea over to her side of the bed. “Nonsense,” he says, but he doesn’t look at her. “It’s been a long day.”

A long and strange day, though she hardly needs to voice that aloud. She takes the cup of tea gratefully from his hands, the smell already soothing her unsettled stomach. “Mm, thank you. It’s the only thing that seems to help.”

He smiles, so terribly shy. There’s no point, now. “You’re welcome.”

She expects him to come to bed, his side of which hasn’t been turned down yet. It’s getting late – even the most rushed of marriages still apparently require the proper celebration – and he looks tired. Instead he just backs away gently, goes to the corner of the room and sits down in the rocking chair that looks out the window.

“Aren’t you going to come to bed?”

He startles at the question, as though he didn’t expect it. “I was – uh – I mean if that’s okay. I-I could just sleep here or on the floor or…” he trails off. “What?”

She expects she must have made a funny face; it tends to do that when incredulous. “Fitz, we’re _married._ We’re married because we’re having a child together. Why on earth wouldn’t you come to bed?”

He flushes deeply red. “I dunno, I just didn’t want to have any expectations. It’s not like, like how it should be, you know?”

She doesn’t know how it should be. She’ll never get the chance to find out. Her heart swells with fondness. It could have been worse. At least she is linked forever to Fitz as opposed to someone who might not care so much.

Jemma sighs, though it’s with tenderness rather than exasperation. “You’re very sweet, but don’t worry. It might not be traditional, but it doesn’t mean you have to spend your wedding night in a chair.” At his doubtful look she pats the bedcovers. “Come on. It’s very comfortable, I promise”

He gets in quickly and lies down beside her. The bed is large, a quilted island. They could spend the whole night without touching. Somehow the thought of it makes her feel lonely.

“Are you comfortable?” She asks.

Fitz lies straight like a rod. “Yes,” he answers. “Thank you.”

A minute passes.

“Are you still feeling sick?” He asks.

“Yes,” she nods. “A bit. I think I’ll try and sleep now. If you don’t mind, that is.”

There’s a small smile on his face as he shakes his head. “No. Of course I don’t mind.”

She turns off the lamp and buries under the duvet, trying to even out her breathing over the hammering of her heart. She tries to listen for Fitz going to sleep but she succumbs to the darkness before he does.

In the morning she wakes before both of them, the thin morning light peeking in through the curtains. They have drifted towards each other in the middle of the night; his arm is around her waist and she can feel his breath on the back of her neck. It’s very reminiscent of the last time she awoke in his arms, only this time she doesn’t have to leave, there’s nowhere else to be.

She spies the cup of tea on the bedside table and waits for her stomach to make the familiar lurch, braces herself for movement. She waits in vain. Her stomach remains calm and she finds her eyelids growing surprisingly heavy once more. With nowhere to go, she snuggles back into the bed, enjoying the weight of Fitz’s arm around her middle and his soft snores in her ear.

For the first morning since this all began, indeed the first morning since _that_ first morning, she is able to drift off back to sleep.


	3. knowing how way leads on way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> '"Yeah but I just-” he swallows. When he looks back up at her his face has changed; he seems so much younger than he did before, than he has ever looked before. “You were studying what you wanted to study and you were so proud about it. You didn’t care what anybody thought. I thought you would look at me, studying only what his dad wants him to, and think I was the biggest kind of tosser there is.”
> 
> Her heart yearns to comfort him and she may be his wife but she doesn’t know how. She simply squeezes his hand tightly. “Never, Fitz.”'
> 
> They get to know each other some more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all of your lovely comments! It means a lot that you're still reading and making time to leave kudos/comments in this crazy world!
> 
> this one is a long one, but I couldn't find a good place to split it so I hope you won't mind too much. 
> 
> Enjoy!

They honeymoon in Cornwall.

A short weekend is all they can afford, unwilling to take anything for more. Jemma’s wondered a lot about her honeymoon. She always thought it would be somewhere in Europe, perhaps a city she’d one day live in, with many exciting things to do and sights to see. She would have had a list, maybe two, and her husband wouldn’t have rolled his eyes when he saw it and he wouldn’t have acted like a child when given a list of things to pack. In her daydreams, he wouldn’t have acted like Fitz.

They bicker whilst packing and they bicker on the drive down and by the time they get there Jemma half considers making him just turn around and take them back. It’s raining, dreadfully so, and their rented cottage is cold and damp which only leads to more bickering whilst trying to make it warm.

“I’ve had enough!” Fitz eventually snaps. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Good!” Jemma shouts behind him.

The door slamming shut is his reply.

For a few minutes she stands there utterly fuming, hands bunched by her sides, jaw clenched. If she was so inclined, she would stamp her foot. Only she isn’t, and after a few moments the rage ebbs and she’s just left with the feeling of w _hat do I do now?_

She shivers suddenly, the damp air chilling her to the bone. Fitz will be back, she’s not afraid of that. She just doesn’t want to fight. It’s their honeymoon and she’s cold and wretched and the nausea could return at any moment. Right now, this whole situation is wretched and she thought at least she had Fitz on her side. It’s just an argument, a petty one caused by lack of sleep and rough, unfamiliar edges, and she knows there will be plenty more. Jemma’s not afraid of arguments, but she’s just afraid that soon it will become like her parents’ marriage, and that soon that is all their life will become: just one big argument that nobody will ever be able to win.

To distract herself she sets about making the house as cosy as she can. She lights a fire, hangs up their wet clothes, and unpacks their suitcases. She unpacks the groceries they bought on the way here and makes herself a cup of tea and a slice of toast. When everything that she can think to do has been done, she turns on the lamp and lays down on the slightly musty-smelling bed and waits for Fitz to return.

He does eventually, after an hour. She doesn’t get up and hears him searching through the house, getting lost, and doubling back on himself, before making it to their room. He strips off his jacket, his shoes he must have left at the door, and lies down next to her without saying a word.

Jemma turns to look at him. His cheeks are red and water droplets fall from his ears. He smells like the sea. She decides to be the bigger person.

“I’m sorry.”

He nods, and more water droplets fall. “Yeah, me too.”

They are both deflated, it seems; no more energy to fight. _Good_ Jemma thinks. She doesn’t want to fight anymore.

“Where did you go?” She asks.

“Just for a walk along the beach.” He shifts to look at her. “Found a nice path that we could take tomorrow if the weather’s alright.”

She smiles. “I’d like that.”

Jemma wonders what this marriage would be like in another life, another version of them. If they would lie like this, side by side, stiff and straight like toy soldiers, looking at each other yet not really seeing each other. Her clothes are starting to get tight, even her jumpers are stretching around the middle. She wonders in another life if she would mind as much.

“I thought you hated me when we first met.”

She’s unsure why she says it, perhaps she just needs it out there. They’ve never sat and talked, not properly. It seems like the time to make it happen.

“What?” His eyebrows raise almost as much as his voice does. “Why would you think that?”

“You never spoke to me, not once. You kept yourself apart from the group and you always answered my questions with the barest response. What other natural conclusion was there to draw other than you hated me?”

He exhales deeply, almost as though he wants to sink down deep into the bedcovers. “No, Jemma.” He reaches for her hand, holding it tightly. “I never hated you.” She must look doubtful. Still holding her hand, he drops her eyes. “I was just always trying to think of something smart enough to say.”

“ _What?_ Fitz, you were reading law and you were coming top of your class if I recall. What did it matter if what you said was smart? I already knew you were.”

“Yeah but I just-” he swallows. When he looks back up at her his face has changed; he seems so much younger than he did before, than he has ever looked before. “You were studying what you wanted to study and you were so proud about it. You didn’t care what anybody thought. I thought you would look at me, studying only what his dad wants him to, and think I was the biggest kind of tosser there is.”

Her heart yearns to comfort him and she may be his wife but she doesn’t know how. She simply squeezes his hand tightly. “Never, Fitz.”

He doesn’t speak but he nods, face softening slightly, and it tells her more than any words could have.

“What did you want to study? If you could have chosen anything at all, what would you have chosen?”

“Engineering,” he says quietly. “If I’d had a choice, if my dad isn’t who he is… I like creating, inventing things, seeing how it all works. It was my dream since I was about five or something.” He laughs sadly. “Yeah, engineering would have been it.”

He sits up, swiping his face and she doesn’t know if it’s water droplets or tears that come away.

“You could still do that someday,” she whispers, caught off guard by something in his voice. “You can still have that dream, Fitz.”

“Nah.” He smiles softly. “My dreams are different now.” And he kisses her on the forehead, feather-light against her skin, before getting up and walking away.

-x-

In a bid to become independent, they decide to move out of Jemma’s parents’ and, after much discussion, they decide to move to Glasgow.

“I love it there,” Fitz admits. “I know it’s not much compared to other places but it’s just – it’s just home.”

Jemma can’t pretend to understand – a feeling of home is something foreign to her – and so she agrees to move with relatively little resistance. There’s a feeling, a longing to just _get away_ and be with Fitz and raise their child together, though she never tells him this. She simply says yes.

Fitz’s father has a job for him in Glasgow, not the comfortable one that he had lined up before, but still, it’s something that’s sure, and in a world that feels as though the ground is nothing more than precariously placed rocks under her feet, Jemma feels that something sure could be wonderful for the both of them.

“It’s not a big job, nothing fancy and that, but it’s not bad money and if we want to depend on ourselves…”

He always looks so sheepish when he tells her things, as though he’s apologising before even finishing the sentence. Does she frighten him? She hopes not; it twists her stomach to think that she might.

Their first night in their new flat is cold. The space is not that big, but they have no belongings to fill it up and the seasons have changed bringing darker nights and an inescapable chill. They unpack blankets and bedding and huddle together, all inhibitions forgotten in search for warmth.

“I think I’ll like Glasgow.”

They’re lying together in the middle of the bed, facing each other under the duvet. In the dark she can just about make out his smile.

“You’ve barely been here.”

“Maybe, but I just have a feeling about it.”

A feeling that has only been intensified by the way Fitz has changed in the ten or so hours they’ve been here. He holds himself less-tightly, almost as if he has been unwound. His accent has returned, becoming thicker at almost the exact moment they crossed the border. It’s like getting to see the true Fitz, someone she has been waiting to see for so long.

“Your mum was helpful.”

He laughs. “Yeah, she was, wasn’t she?”

“A lot friendlier than my own.”

“She has her moments.”

Jemma frowns. “What do you mean?”

“When I told her that you were pregnant, she threw her slipper at me and called me an idiot. Then five minutes later, not even joking, she asked me what your address was so she could send down some things for you.”

Even though she has met Fitz’s mother only twice, at the wedding and then today, Jemma thinks that sounds exactly like something she would do. She hopes she and Maggie Fitz will be great friends.

“It must be nice, getting to be so close to her again.”

It’s dark, so she can’t be entirely sure, but she thinks a shadow crosses Fitz’s face. “Yeah, I hope. Things with my dad… it wasn’t always easy growing up. It’s better when it’s just the two of us.”

One day she’ll gather enough courage to ask about Fitz’s father, a man whom she’s only seen in photographs and heard in stories.

“Are your parents still married?”

There’s a sudden silence, both of them having stopped breathing the moment the question filled the small space between them. Her stomach sinks, believing she’s ruined it all, and she begins to stammer an apology.

“It’s fine,” Fitz tells her, but his voice isn’t as sure as before. “You’re my wife, you have a right to know what you’ve married into. They’re still married, but my dad moved out ages ago. He sends her money, makes sure I’m still doing what he wants me to do, but other than that he does what he likes.”

She scoots closer to him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s better without him there.”

They’re safe under here; the outside world cannot touch them. In a moment of daring, she reaches for his hand and gently places it on her growing bump.

“You’ll be a good father, Fitz. I know you will be.”

She hears him swallow. “Thanks, Jemma.” His voice is full of unshed tears. She feels his thumb gently move back and forth across her stomach and pretends that it’s the cold that makes her shiver.

“What did your father say, when you told him about me?”

It’s a question that comes out without thought or censorship, but as soon as she’s said it she doesn’t want to take it back. It feels important, like she has to know.

There’s a long, jagged inhale. The thumb rubbing her stomach stills. She can feel her heartbeat thumping in her ears but she says nothing, just waits for the answer.

“He told me that I was stupid, that I would regret it for the rest of my life. That I would grow to resent the responsibility.” The thumb resumes its gentle movements once more. “And that he would know because that’s what happened to him.”

There’s a murderous rage in Jemma’s chest, quite unlike anything she’s ever known. They will do better, her and Fitz. It’s a vow she makes right here on this cold night in a strange city, a hundred miles from the only life she’s ever known. It’s a vow that she would rather die than break.

Being angry won’t help anything, she knows. She simply places her hand on top of Fitz’s, both of them cradling her stomach, and tries to think of something to say that doesn’t sound hollow and empty.

-x-

As her stomach gets bigger and rounder, the flat becomes more furnished, Fitz goes back to work, and Jemma tries to write.

She sets the scene perfectly: the radio is set to low in the background, she has a steaming mug beside her, her aching feet are propped on a stool with a cushion and she feels perfectly inspired. Perfectly inspired that is, until it comes time to actually type and suddenly, she has nothing

Writing has always been such a big part of her life. Ever since she was a little girl, she has filled countless notebooks and typed up endless pages on her typewriter, needing to empty the well of imagination in her mind so it didn’t overflow. She wrote everything from fiction to newspaper articles to book reviews and was often reprimanded by her nanny for doing so when she was meant to be in bed.

Is this what she is reduced to? Some stay at home mother? It’s the tradition, she knows, but she never thought it would be her. She never wanted it to be her. She wanted to be a famous writer and she didn’t mind if she started at the bottom as long as she got to _start._ Now she’s just here, heavily pregnant, sitting in some still-freezing flat in Glasgow, in a country that isn’t even hers, married to a man who’s-

And here she stops, because it’s not fair to complain about Fitz. This isn’t what he wanted either. He’s far from perfect, but neither is she, and this can’t be a dream for him either. He wanted to be an engineer, had a shot at being a big lawyer before that night together happened and they’re both living with the aftermath. And she doesn’t want to admit it aloud, barely even dares to admit it inside her own head, but she’s so deathly afraid that she’ll be the one who’s like Fitz’s father, the one who resents their own child for taking dreams she never even got a chance to try at.

It’s a lonely place to be, and her only solace is the hope that, somehow, there’s another version of her living the life she’s always wanted, the dream that was meant to be.

-x-

“What are you hoping for?”

They sit on the sofa in front of the fire, watching the light reflect in the Christmas ornaments hung on the mantelpiece. It’s quiet; the usually busy streets outside have fallen still. Tomorrow they will be busy, the suitcases lie by the front door, bound for Sheffield for the festive season. They will be surrounded with company until New Year, never a moment alone and so tonight they claim for themselves.

Fitz’s hand rests on Jemma’s bump, as it frequently does these days. Their baby has taken to somersaulting, those lazy spins that cause Jemma to pause every time she feels one cause endless joy for her husband. Tonight, though, she doesn’t feel as afraid. She feels warm, and cosy, and at this moment nothing troubles her.

“I don’t know. I suppose I should say I don’t care.” She leans back into his chest, the only position that’s comfy to her of late. “What about you?”

“Honestly?”

She laughs. “Of course.”

“Whenever I imagined myself with kids, I always imagined a little girl.”

A little girl? That surprises her. Everything surprises her with Fitz, it seems. She knows how he likes his tea, and that he prefers to wear a blue shirt on Mondays but the big things, the things that matter, always surprise her. Suddenly she feels on edge again, the relaxation ebbing away.

“I didn’t know you’d ever thought about children,” she manages to say, her voice barely even.

“Not a lot, but…” Jemma feels him looking at her but she can’t look back. His voice is peculiar. “In a roundabout way.” He squeezes her shoulder. “Now I’ve admitted my secret, do you want to revise your answer?”

She can hear the smile in his voice. To him nothing has changed but for her… for her it feels as though the ground may swallow her up if she doesn’t watch out.

“I… Um…” She tries, swallows then tries again. Her words get stuck, cannot be formed. Panic mounts in her chest.

“You okay?”

Is she alright? Absolutely not. But he sounds so happy and she doesn’t want to talk, not tonight. She just wants to sit here and watch the fire.

“A little girl would be lovely,” she manages, just for once wishing she could be as fine as Fitz is, and not be so terribly afraid.

-x-

In another life she wonders if she’d be less terrified. She wonders if she’d be okay.

-x-

It’s three in the morning, that pre-dawn hour when it feels as though the whole world is asleep and a pin drop echoes as loudly as the banging of drums.

Jemma lies awake, staring at the ceiling. It’s cold – she can’t feel her feet – but that’s not the reason she’s unable to sleep. It’s not even fear, though that has been an alarming development as of late. Her stomach is huge, a large bump in the night and the pressure of it causes an unbearable twinge in her back.

She swings her legs out of bed, taking a while to do so, and manages to stumble into a standing position. With both hands at the small of her back she pushes out. Her centre of gravity has shifted, however, and she barely has time to grab onto the bedside table so she doesn’t fall over.

“You okay?” A groggy voice asks.

“I’m s _ore_ ,” she huffs, torn between being angry or bursting into tears. Her emotions are all over the place lately, which is not somewhere she likes them to be. She likes them to be neat and tidy, in their own little box in her mind. Everything, it seems, has changed.

Fitz switches on the lamp, props himself up on his elbow. He tries to focus his bleary, concern-filled eyes. “What kind of sore?”

“Nothing bad, I’m sure,” she grumbles. “Just my back hurts.” She shivers. “And I’m freezing.”

Fitz swings his legs out of bed, shivering too at the cold air that must have just assaulted him. “I’ll go make you some tea.”

She doesn’t want tea, but she doesn’t want to say that, and so she nods pitifully while trying to arch her back gently, craving that release of pressure.

The end of January and it’s all gone cold. She’s so big she can’t even reach down to put socks on her feet, and she refuses to ask for Fitz to do so. She can’t write, can’t sleep, food doesn’t appeal to her. She’s sitting on the couch when Fitz goes to work every morning, and every evening he returns to find her in the exact same spot.

She can feel his confusion, his reluctance to say a thing. He eyes her stomach when he thinks she’s not looking, a sense of bewilderment on his face. A sentiment she echoes. She can’t believe they’ve got here, either.

Fitz returns with her tea, that she accepts with two hands. The cup is hot and she takes a big sip immediately. It burns her throat in the best way. “Thank you.”

He scratches the back of his head. “Sure. How’s your back?”

It’s all she can do to not sob. “It hurts.”

“Do you want me to try, uh, rubbing it for you?”

Another thing that she finds strange: they’ve slept together and yet now they’re so hesitant to touch each other. She never imagined she’d be afraid of touching her husband. But her back is agony and she’s so desperate that she’ll brave the awkwardness of a back massage that’s surely no more awkward than anything else in her life.

It’s embarrassing how desperate she sounds when she pitifully says, “Yes please.”

She lies down on the bed, taking a great many minutes to do so, and rolls onto her side. Fitz kneels beside her. Her face is turned away from him but she can just imagine him biting his bottom lip, eyes gently roaming over her back, wondering where to begin. She sleeps beside him every night, wakes up to him every morning. She knows his face better than her own. It shouldn’t be a surprise that it arises so clearly in her mind.

She feels gentle but firm fingers on her back, instantly finding the spot. She jumps without meaning to.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no,” she says. “It felt wonderful. How did you manage to find it instantly?”

“It’s just physics,” he murmurs, voice soft. “Just weight-bearing is all.”

“It’s incredibly handy,” she whispers, enjoying the feeling tremendously. His fingers gently knead the spot where the pain has been unbearable in a rhythm and before she even knows it, she finds herself drifting and doesn’t have the energy to tell him to stop.

When she awakes in the morning the other side of the bed is empty. She’s tucked back under the covers, there’s a steaming cup of tea on the bedside tables and there are socks, thick and warm, on her feet.

-x-

In another life she wonders if she’d be more romantic.

She’s never pretended to be a romantic person, and she never minded, but she didn’t expect to marry one either. She’s sure she was never meant to feel as cold as she does.

She can’t, and won’t, pretend to be something she isn’t, no matter how unbalanced she feels. What she does do, however, is make Fitz a lunch with his favourite sandwich and pack it all with a sweet little note, let him win at the crossword, and not reproach him when he suggests babies’ names that are, by all accounts, the worst names she has ever heard in her life. 

-x-

It is something of a rule of life for Jemma Simmons to excel in everything that she tries.

It’s something innate, this deep desire to be not only good, but the best at everything she puts her mind to. It has served her well over the years; while other classmates had to drag themselves out of bed to study, she would be in the library from seven in the morning, bright-eyed with tea in a thermos and already three pages of notes written in her neat hand.

Whilst pregnancy and subsequent marriage may not have been part of the plan, that hasn’t dulled her desire to excel. If anything, it has only fuelled her more. If she cannot have the life she wanted then by God she will make the best out of this one.

A noble intention, and one that she has tried to make a reality, and she feels she hasn’t done terribly. They are happy, moderately so, and doing well. Neither has killed the other yet, the bills are paid on time and there is always food in the kitchen. It isn’t a terrible life.

Her ability to be good at things she tries, however, fails her as far as labour is concerned.

It’s a cold day, a dark one at the end of February where the wind howls and the rain batters at the thin glass in the window. It whistles through the flat and Jemma’s almost glad because it drowns out the voice of her utterly unbearable midwife.

“Have you called Fitz?” Jemma manages through clenched teeth, as the wave of pain crashes and retreats. It’s three in the afternoon and he’s still at work, leaving in the morning only because she told him to in a way that left no room for argument. She hadn’t thought it would be this quick. Another thing to add to the list.

The midwife, a stern, older woman in her fifties with tightly curled white hair and cold hands takes Jemma’s pulse. “I’ve phoned him, yes. He said he’s on his way now.”

“Oh,” Jemma sighs. “That’s good.”

She’s afraid, so terribly afraid, and so terribly alone. She wishes for Fitz. She wishes for her mother. She wishes for somebody, anybody familiar to come and hold her hand and say that it’s going to be alright.

The pain isn’t the worst thing about it all. It’s the fear. Throughout her pregnancy, even whilst feeling kicks and somersaults from within her, the baby has been an almost abstract concept, something on a far-off horizon. There was always another day to worry about it, another time to do things. It felt as though it was going to be fine because at least she had time.

Now there’s an urgency and the fear that’s been sitting on her chest grows heavier and makes it hard to breathe. Fears that she’s never uttered aloud come to the forefront of her mind, spin around on themselves until she thinks she’s going to be sick. What does she know about being a mother? She’s had nannies and tutors all her life. Her mother isn’t a bad woman, but she’s just a woman who decides what’s going to be for dinner or gives her a very dry kiss on the cheek. When Jemma thinks of her mother she does not think of love. She doesn’t want to be like that to her own baby. She wants to be better only she doesn’t know how. With nobody here to distract her except the midwife and her appallingly condescending voice, the fears have her almost undivided attention.

She clenches her jaw as her muscles contract. “Did he say how long he would be?”

The midwife only shakes her head.

Jemma drifts, sweaty and dazed, and looks about their room. Scrupulously clean and cosy, filled with cheap but cheerful furnishings. Her and Fitz’s wedding photo sits in a silver frame at the dressing table and they even look somewhat happy.

She’s tried her best, and surely that counts for something, yes? Surely it must.

In another life she wonders if it would be like this, but the thought hurts her so much so she doesn’t dwell on it. To dream of a life she does not and cannot have only makes her sad.

There’s a thumping at the front door, the rattle of a key in the lock. Jemma lifts her head up from the pillow, spirits lifting.

“Oh, Fitz!” She cries, even managing a smile. How happy she is that he’s here. How unbelievably happy.

“Jemma!” His voice, breathless and high, reverberates around the room. “Jemma, I’m here!”

The midwife looks up sharply, leaving Jemma and going over to the door as it begins to open. She steps onto the other side of it and Jemma, frowning, listens in on what she’s saying.

“You have to let me in,” Fitz pleads. She can imagine him standing there in his suit and tie, red-faced and a little bit sweaty.

“The labour room is no place for a man,” the midwife says, her uppity tone making Jemma’s blood boil. “You can wait in the living room and have some tea on for us when it’s over.”

Jemma expects Fitz to be cowed, after all the midwife is terrifying and he’s so out of his depth she expects him to just do what he’s told, thinking it’s for the best. As much as she wants him, she couldn’t blame him.

However, it’s just another surprise because Fitz’s tone hardens. “No,” he says, and she can’t even picture him because it’s a tone she’s never heard him use. “I won’t. You’ll let me in because that’s my wife in there and she needs me.”

And Jemma almost sobs with relief even though later she’ll find herself embarrassed at the notion. She’s tired and uncomfortable and in unbearable pain. She wants her husband.

The midwife must relent because the next thing, after some minor huffing and puffing, she opens the door and in rushes Fitz, with his tie half-undone and his eyes wide with fear. He’s by her side in a second, smoothing Jemma’s hair away from her damp forehead.

“Hey,” he says gently. “This is a surprise.”

“Oh, Fitz,” she tries to smile but ends up bursting into tears instead. He kisses her on the forehead and shushes her gently.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “You’re okay. I’m here now. You’re alright.”

This is a moment she’s never given much thought to, and somehow she never imagined it would be like this. She doesn’t even notice there’s anybody else in the room; it feels as though the entire world just consists of her and Fitz.

“I was so scared,” she whimpers, unable to control her tears. They trickle down her face and into her mouth, a tiny taste of the ocean that roars inside her.

“So was I,” he admits and there are tears in his eyes, too. “But you’re strong, Jemma. You’re going to be alright. I promise you.”

The midwife says something, Jemma can’t quite hear her, and Fitz stands up from where he’s been kneeling beside her. In a moment of panic she seizes his arm, unable to make herself let go even if she wanted to.

“Don’t leave me,” she begs, suddenly more afraid than she’s ever been in her whole life.

He gives her such a look that she almost can’t bear it and kisses her on the forehead again, voice hoarse. “Never.”

-x-

The wind howls, the windows rattle, and their daughter comes into the world making quite the racket to rival them both.

The baby is tiny, with tiny lashes and tiny toes and a tiny smile that causes Jemma’s heart to flip over on itself. She’s placed in her mother’s arms and the first time Jemma looks into her tiny face she thinks _I know you._

Fitz, beside her, his hand on her shoulder, has no words. When Jemma can bear to tear her eyes away from her daughter, she looks at him and sees him utterly bewildered and completely devoted.

“She’s beautiful,” he whispers.

“Yes,” Jemma agrees. “Quite beautiful.”

She knows she should offer her to Fitz but she can’t make herself move, can’t make herself let go. All these months of aching, of a terrible fear that she could never utter aloud have all come down to this moment and have simply vanished. All she feels now is an overwhelming feeling, so much so that she could be drunk on it, and she wonders _is this love?_

Once she thought Fitz hated her and then she married him and now they have a daughter together and it’s almost like something in the stories that once upon a time she thought she would write.

-x-

They name her Eleanor.

It is a regal name, Jemma thinks. A powerful name. Their daughter is barely a week old and yet already there’s such an intensity in her eyes and it makes Jemma think that one day she’ll take over the world. Names hold power, and it’s something she never even gave thought to until her surname was no longer _Simmons_ and instead became _Fitz._


	4. sorry i could not travel both

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There’s something in her heart, an almost overwhelming feeling, and as she watches her husband and her daughter, she feels it magnify by tenfold. She knows she loves Eleanor, it is simply a fact, but she still isn’t sure of what she feels for Fitz. Whether it is love or not, she cannot say, but there’s definitely an affection there that cannot be denied. This might not be the way she wanted everything to go, but it’s gotten to the point where, really, she can’t imagine her life without him."
> 
> They have a daughter and now what? It comes in waves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for your lovely comments! you really know how to cheer a person up!
> 
> it gets a little bit angsty from here on out. Nothing terrible, but just so you're aware. It was never going to be smooth sailing. (Also, everything is from Jemma's pov so it's not what I think, and not the way things might necessarily be. Just so it doesn't look like I'm being mean). 
> 
> Chapter count went up because I realised this one was originally 7,000 words which seemed a bit *too* much for one go.
> 
> I hope you enjoy and stay home, and stay safe xo

Something she never expected, never even gave thought to, was how lonely it was going to be.

She’s heard of it before and dismissed it as utter nonsense. How can you be lonely when you have a baby? You’re not alone, wasn’t that the point? You’re never alone again.

Jemma doesn’t notice it at first. Fitz leaves for work as he always does and she’s alone, as she always was. In those first few days there’s so much to do, so much to learn, and this, plus the daily visits from the midwife, keep her on her toes. She’s tired, bone-weary, but it’s all rather fascinating that one so small could demand so much.

But the fascination wears off, and the tiredness becomes deep exhaustion that never abates. There are dark circles under her eyes and her hair needs washed and yet every moment that Eleanor sleeps Jemma crawls into her own bed and snatches a few minutes of sleep that never last but at least let her keep going.

It’s lonely _because_ she’s not alone. She has to be here by herself. Fitz’s mum calls around to help out and some of the other women in the street pop by but in the end they go back to their own lives and Fitz is still at work and she’s alone with her daughter and there’s nobody to share it with, nobody to truly talk with and it results in a loneliness of the kind that she’s never felt in all her life.

She’s been lonely before, and she has a predictable nature, and so she does what she always does and pulls out a notebook, intent on trying to write it out. Except the words don’t come as easily as they used to and she spends an hour looking at a blank page before Eleanor begins to cry and she sighs, closing over the book, feeling as though another part of her life is slipping away.

-x-

Hunter comes to visit.

He arrives on the ten o’clock train. Jemma meets him at the station. His hair is shorter and his skin glows from his deep tan. He’s been in France; she’s heard from his letters.

“Jemma!” He calls, waving his arm wildly, and Jemma feels her heart soar at the sight of him.

“Hello,” she says and when he’s close enough she buries herself in his chest. His arm comes around her and presses her closer.

“Are you alright, love?” He asks, and she can picture the worried frown on his face.

“I’m better now that you’re here,” is the most truthful answer she can muster and he wisely doesn’t ask anymore.

He is absolutely besotted with Eleanor and as they sit in the flat, surrounded by baby paraphernalia, he bounces her up and down on his knee until she is gurgling with delight and giving him gummy smiles that make Hunter beam back at her in return.

“She’s gorgeous, Jemma,” he coos, and Eleanor squeals as though she takes the compliment to heart. “Really bloody gorgeous.”

“Thank you,” Jemma says wearily. “I’m quite partial to her myself.”

“It is a shame though, no denying that.”

She looks sharply at her cousin. Her voice drips with ice, edged with glass. “What is a shame?”

Eleanor screws up her face at her mother’s tone and Hunter bounces her higher. He seems impervious to her voice, as though it doesn’t even register. He only has eyes for the baby.

“That you didn’t love Fitz,” he says, and his voice is sing-song, sickly sweet. “When you did what you did. Someone this adorable surely has to be made with love.” He looks at Jemma pointedly. “You sure you never?”

“You’re being fanciful,” she chides, and stands up, looking around to see what to start tidying first. “Rather a romantic notion for you, is it not?”

“You’re the writer, Jemma,” he tells her whilst not looking at her. “You’d know more about them than I do.”

She looks at her daughter, the perfect blend of her and Fitz. Blue-eyed and dark-haired with a smile the heavens would fall for. She laughs like it’s limitless, like the entire world is a joke. Fitz is utterly besotted with her, and often she finds him standing over her crib when he cannot sleep, looking at his daughter in a way that seems familiar but that she cannot place.

‘Stories are just stories,” she says at last. “What I write about and what I believe… They don’t necessarily reflect the truth.”

“Alright,” Hunter says, and doesn’t bring it up again.

-x-

Jemma never got as far as imagining herself as a mother.

She used to have so many dreams and she wrote them all out in countless notebooks, filling page after page with detailed plans about her career and the necessary steps to achieve it, the specific way she wanted her house to look, and the meals she would serve at the elaborate dinner parties she would have. Whenever she was downhearted or discouraged, continuing even when she started her degree, she just had to take a peek into the notebook and remember what she was doing this all for, sure that in the end the reward would be worth it.

It’s not to say she didn’t imagine herself with children – she did, but just in a very abstract way. Even she knew, way back then, that children weren’t necessarily something you could _plan._ That you could try all you wanted but from the very moment of conception they were entirely out with your control.

She loves Eleanor. It’s a feeling unlike anything else, a love that knows no bounds. This tiny little creature with flailing fists and gummy smiles has stolen her heart completely. Jemma never imagined it could feel like this.

In another life she wonders if she’d be any good at it, if she would have had children at all. It’s all very well and good saying you’d like children, but what if her career had gotten in the way? What if men had been intimidated by her success and there had simply been nobody who wanted to marry her?

In another life, she might never have known the love for her daughter, the way it feels when Eleanor clings to her mother’s fingers like they’re the only thing she could ever want, and it’s something, it’s finally something, that she doesn’t envy her alternate self for.

-x-

“And how is everything up north, darling?”

Her mother’s voice is grainy down the phone and yet the false brightness is as clear as if she were standing right here. Jemma resists the urge to roll her eyes, before remembering that her mother cannot see if she does.

“It’s fine,” she says, matching the tone. “Brilliant, even.”

“Excellent,” though it sounds as though she means anything but. “How is the baby?”

“Eleanor, mum.”

“Yes, Eleanor. How is she?”

Jemma knows her mum is trying as best as she knows how to deal with this situation that she has never pretended to be in favour of. She had phoned diligently when they had moved here and when Eleanor was born and had cooed appropriately over the photographs that Jemma had sent down. It’s more effort than she was expecting, but it still doesn’t seem like much at all and it’s a hard thing to forgive.

“She’s wonderful.” Jemma can’t help the smile, the note of pride that creeps into her voice. “She’s so wonderful. She laughs at absolutely everything.”

Her mother makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Hunter mentioned that. She seems like she’s very easily entertained.”

It’s not disappointment, it’s something different than that. Perhaps she’s reflecting on her own motherhood, wondering how they reached this space where silence buzzes noisily on the telephone line between them.

“Oh, definitely,” Jemma laughs. “She never gets bored.”

“Not like you,” her mother says, and it’s so unexpected that Jemma doesn’t know what to do with this information that on the surface seems so trivial but is much deeper than either is accustomed to. “You used to get so frustrated so quickly if you were tired of something. Nanny had no idea what to do.”

“That sounds like me,” she says feebly.

“We hoped you would grow out of it, but you never did. I’m glad for it now.”

It’s getting dangerously sentimental, and it overcomes caution in Jemma’s mind.

“Come and visit, mum.”

“Me? I don’t know, darling,” but her voice is not as sure. “What would I do with your father?”

“Bring him.” It’s embarrassing how close she is to pleading, but she so desperately wants to try with them all of a sudden.

“And stay with you? In the flat?”

“You could.” And then, “Well, maybe not, but there are lovely hotels not too far away. Eleanor would love to see you.” She takes a deep breath. “I would love to see you.”

The only words of affection they exchange are the empty ‘I love you’s that are said at Christmas and on birthdays. This is as close as they will ever get, Jemma thinks, to something resembling the conventional relationship so often written about.

There are a few seconds of silence in which the buzzing gets louder but eventually her mother sighs down the phone.

“Alright then, Jemma.” Her voice is soft and unsure. It is a new road they are travelling down. “ I don’t know when but we’ll come.”

-x-

One morning she wakes up at a time when the sky is grey, streaks of fiery red across it like the dawn is trying to breakthrough. The flat is quiet, not even the birds chirp outside, and Jemma squints, sitting up on the bed. The space next to her is empty and cold. She feels heavy. She frowns.

_Eleanor._

Eleanor likes to be fed the second the sky turns, or so Jemma swears, and she should have been crying long before now. Jemma reaches for the crib, blindly, not panicking yet but almost there…

The crib is empty too.

A panic, icy and sickening, squeezes her heart painfully in her chest and she can feel her heart rate begin to quicken, breathing coming harder and faster and she’s on the verge of _something_ until she hears a noise coming from the living room. A noise that she would know anywhere, followed by a voice she would know anywhere.

She tip-toes to the door, peeking around from where it was left slightly open. There’s a lamp on in there, though the room is still shrouded in shadow, and in the middle of it stands Fitz with Eleanor against his chest. His hair sticks up at odd angles and his dressing gown hangs half-open, He walks in soft circles, barely shuffling around the carpet.

“Hey, you’re alright,” he coos, patting Eleanor gently on the back as she gurgles in happiness. “You’re alright.”

If Eleanor was still crying and clearly hungry then Jemma might go and interrupt but as her daughter seems quite content to lie against her father, Jemma remains where she is.

“Your mum’s sleeping, and she’s very tired so you’ve got to let her, alright? You’ll just have to be content with me for now.”

Eleanor says something in her own way and Fitz chuckles.

“I’m not so bad, am I? Well that’s something at least.”

He takes a deep breath. Jemma can see the way his chest moves and the way his lips press together when he faces her door.

“I love you, you know that, yeah?” His hand on Eleanor’s back stills, just pressing her to him for now. Jemma wonders if she should turn away but she cannot move. She hardly dares to breathe, afraid that if she does it would ruin the tableau in front of her.

“I don’t want to be like my father, and I’m hoping not to be.” A shuddery breath. “I know you came into this world unconventionally, and it might not have been the way we would have chosen to do things but… but we did alright. I hope we did alright.”

 _Yes. We did alright_ Jemma thinks.

“Your mum and I… We love you. We love you so much. And I know that’s not always going to be enough but it’s something, isn’t it? You know that, no matter what, we’re always going to be here for you.” Fitz stops moving completely. “There’s a lot to be said for that.”

Fitz has a way with words that Jemma will never understand nor possess. The way he can say with certainty what he feels in his heart leaves her breathless.

She moves away from the door, suddenly ashamed for her spying. As quietly as she can she crawls back into bed and lies awake and waits for the whole world to wake up, too. To love and know you are loved… yes, there’s a lot to be said for that.

-x-

Their first family outing takes them to the beach on a moderately warm day at the end of May. It starts off a sunny one, with only a few fluffy clouds in an otherwise endless blue sky, but by the time they bus themselves to the beach the sky has darkened ominously, and the wind whistles across the sands. Jemma looks around, not liking what she sees.

“I don’t know, Fitz. Maybe we should go back.”

The wind stops for a moment and there’s a hint of sun on the horizon. He points it out to her. “We could stay for a bit? Just in case it gets nice?” He dumps the bags he was carrying into the sand, and the _thump_ they make has Jemma understanding why Fitz might not want to carry them back just yet. “What do you say?”

She nods and hands Eleanor to him whilst getting out the blankets and the picnic. They decided to come here on a whim this morning, seeing the lovely weather and not sure of what else to do. A whim it might have been, but Jemma had still been determined that it should have been done properly and she’s packed a feast, even just for her and Fitz.

It’s a strange situation they find themselves in now, realisation dawning over the last couple of months that this is their life now. This is it. They’re married and they have a daughter and it doesn’t feel quite how it felt in the months before Eleanor came along. The finality of it, and maybe the monotony, have left them feeling more out of place than they did.

Jemma’s answer to this is to spend more time together, to real gel them together. She’s sat and thought about it during those long hours that Fitz is at work and it feels like the solution. It’s why she suggested this beach trip, why she’s put effort into it. She wants to try, and she wants Fitz to try, too.

While she’s setting up, she watches Fitz as he walks with Eleanor into the no-doubt freezing water and back again, gently wave-hopping. It’s the first time she’s had a proper look at him in a while – both of them being too tired to talk much in the evenings anymore. He looks tired, she thinks, ever so tired. He’s been working a lot, demands pressed upon him from his father. Jemma still hasn’t met the man. Fitz refuses to allow him anywhere near her or Eleanor.

There’s _something_ in her heart, an almost overwhelming feeling, and as she watches her husband and her daughter, she feels it magnify by tenfold. She knows she loves Eleanor, it is simply a fact, but she still isn’t sure of what she feels for Fitz. Whether it is love or not, she cannot say, but there’s definitely an affection there that cannot be denied. This might not be the way she wanted everything to go, but it’s gotten to the point where, really, she can’t imagine her life without him.

They manage to have their picnic without too much trouble but it does end up raining in the end, rather spectacularly bursting from the clouds just as Jemma puts the leftover sandwiches away. They end up packing everything up in a hurry, squealing and laughing as they do so in an effort not to get more soaked than they already are. By the time they make it onto the bus back home again they are dripping and laughing as the water drops from them and pools on the seats they are sitting on.

“Well, that was an adventure, wasn’t it?” Fitz grins, looking younger as raindrops fall from his hair onto his face. Jemma’s reminded of another time they did that, a musty room in Cornwall when it felt like their entire world was falling apart.

She declines to think of it now. Instead she laughs, open-mouthed, with a baby on her hip. “Wasn’t it just. We’re absolutely soaked.”

Fitz looks down at them all, at the water now collecting on the floor. “Typical Scottish spring,” he says. “Weather changes about five times in a day.”

“How wonderful,” she says, and wonders if she means it. “Shall I expect a tornado next?”

He laughs and shakes his head. “It’s more likely to snow.”

 _Why not?_ Jemma thinks, looking out the window and seeing the rain bouncing off the empty pavements that were earlier filled with people. It feels like a day where anything could happen.

-x-

In another life she wonders if she’d be this confused about love.

She’s always liked the clear cut, the exact. She can weave wonderfully complex stories, and she certainly has no qualms about subjecting her characters to confusion and misdirection and hopelessly complicated feelings. In her own life, however, the one outside the book, she likes things to be a bit simpler.

Love, to her, was supposed to be simple. You met someone, you courted, and by the time marriage came along you loved them. It happened in a sequence, a logical order. It might have been different in books and films but that’s exactly what they were: books and films. This kind of thing didn’t happen in real life. Real life was linear and made more sense.

It’s quite sobering to realise that’s not the case.

Her love for Eleanor is simple. It’s big, _enormous,_ and takes up so much of her heart that she doesn’t know how she didn’t feel empty before. But it’s simple. She loves her daughter, would kill for her and die for her without hesitation. It’s just like that.

Other types of love, however… Jemma’s not entirely sure what they are. Eleanor’s existence brings into question everything she once thought she knew. Does she really love her family? Or does she just think she does because she should? She always said that she loved them _but…_ Maybe that ‘but’ matters now. Maybe it erases what comes before.

Then there’s romantic love, the trickiest of them all. A slippery, deceiving feeling that seems to hurt more than it helps. She thought that she’d know it when she felt it, that it would be sure but it isn’t. How can you tell it from anything else? In another life she thought she’d be better at this but in this life she has no clue at all.

She finds herself wondering if Fitz is alright at work, if he’s not overdoing it. She makes him his favourite dinner without even thinking about it and puts a note in with his sandwich for his lunch. She finds herself sitting at her typewriter and wanting to write about a feeling she cannot name, about something that’s just out with her grasp that she cannot understand. She finds herself staring at his face as he sleeps and she wonders _is this love?_

-x-

“Would you have married me even if you hated me?”

A Saturday morning. Fitz sits with Eleanor on his lap at the table while Jemma makes breakfast. Until a second ago there was the sound of a kettle boiling and Eleanor gurgling away. Now, at Jemma’s question, it has fallen silent.

She looks at Fitz expectantly, watches as his eyes slide away from her and look at Eleanor’s bald baby head.

“I didn’t hate you,” he says. “I never hated you.”

“That’s not what I asked. _If_ you _had_ hated me, would you have still asked me to marry you?”

Fitz presses his lips together. He doesn’t want to be here, she can tell. He’d get up right now and leave if he thought she’d let him. But she won’t. She needs to know.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says at last, voice clipped. He looks her in the eye. “So yeah, I would’ve.”

“What about if I hated you?”

Fitz’s eyes narrow. “I still would’ve asked.”

“I thought so,” she tells him and turns her attention back to the breakfast.

“Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t. I just wanted to know.”

“Why?”

“No reason.”

There is, of course, a reason, but she one she cannot name and so she cannot tell him. Not when she is so unsure of her feelings.

“There’s obviously a reason, Jemma.”

“It’s not important, Fitz. It doesn’t matter.”

There’s silence again. Even the kettle doesn’t dare boil. There’s something heavy in the air, something heavy in Jemma’s chest. That ache that never went away.

“You never would have said yes if you thought I hated you,” Fitz huffs. “If you hated me.”

Jemma doesn’t turn, doesn’t acknowledge him, and breakfast is a quiet affair.

-x-

She takes to writing in the middle of the night.

It’s not a conscious decision, and begins simply as a result of a sleepless night where she tosses and turns and the only thing that soothes her is the rhythmic scratching of a pen on paper. From then it spirals and soon it’s every night and she cannot wait for that pre-dawn hour where everyone in the world is asleep except her and she can write herself a better life than the one she finds herself in now.

The middle of the night is the only time it feels safe. During the day she has Eleanor and housework and all other sorts of womanly duties she is expected to perform. At night her time is her own; her family are asleep and she is free to write down everything she thinks without the worry of someone accidentally looking over her shoulder and not liking what they should find there.

It’s not that she’s not grateful for her life, but there’s a part of her that can’t help wondering all that she might have had, and she finds comfort in putting the _what-ifs_ onto paper, in her own way making them a reality.

It makes her feel alive, her own person again and it starts as an accident and becomes a routine and nobody needs to know. And if Fitz eyes her strangely across the breakfast table, wondering why there are dark circles under her eyes, he doesn’t mention it.


	5. i doubted if i should ever come back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "At night she writes in her notebook with such a ferocity that the pen bleeds through several pages, rendering them unusable. At first she can only look at the ruined pages, black ink spreading across them like a disease. Then she tears them out. One by one, very slowly. She balls them up. She throws them at the wall and they bounce off like dead things and lie on the floor, mocking her. She could cry, only she doesn’t, instead picking them up and placing them in the bin."
> 
> Things are hard for a bit, and then they get better. They stumble a little along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! Me again! Thank you for your unwavering kindness, it means the absolute world! 
> 
> This one's a bit rough, just warning you now, but I promise it's the last one that's like this and if you can get through this then you'll be grand!
> 
> I hope you enjoy :)

The arguments start small.

It begins as sharp jibes and eye rolls and huffing and puffing after said jibes. Jemma will make a comment and Fitz will roll his eyes and huff and return with an equally acidic remark to which she’ll follow with another and vice versa. It’s not always, not every time they communicate, but it’s more than was there before, and, while it’s unsettling, she can’t find it within herself to make herself stop.

There’s a growing sense of frustration between them. Jemma can see it; it’s like watching a pot that’s about to boil over. Except she doesn’t go over and turn the gas down, watch as the bubbles recede away from the rim. No, she keeps it on, and occasionally she turns it up.

It’s not just her and it’s not just him. It’s both of them working together to create this upset, to destroy the harmony they worked so carefully to build. It’s becoming their parents’ relationships, sarcastic and bitter, and she wonders if they were always destined to end up this way. If some things really are inevitable.

At night she writes in her notebook with such a ferocity that the pen bleeds through several pages, rendering them unusable. At first she can only look at the ruined pages, black ink spreading across them like a disease. Then she tears them out. One by one, very slowly. She balls them up. She throws them at the wall and they bounce off like dead things and lie on the floor, mocking her. She could cry, only she doesn’t, instead picking them up and placing them in the bin.

In the morning she’s fractious, and her bad mood can be felt around the house but nothing comes from it. It’s a Saturday and Fitz is home, meaning Eleanor is always in his arms. They never fight in front of her. There’s a line, and both of them would rather die than cross it.

-x

“Are you alright, Fitz?”

He’s just this minute in from work. His tie is already loosened slightly from its knot and the worry lines are still deep, not yet smoothed out from the relief he feels when he holds Eleanor in his arms. He’s holding her at the moment, kissing her on top of her hair, and he freezes slightly when Jemma speaks, as though he wasn’t expecting her to.

“Fine,” he says, not shortly but definitely clipped. Not from temper or attitude, but as though he simply doesn’t have the energy to say any more than that.

She resists the urge to roll her eye and sigh. She knows that they been on edge lately, bickering at almost every empty moment, but she still cares for him. She always has. If there’s something wrong she feels, as his wife, his co-parent, she has a right to know.

“Is there anything bothering you at work?”

He hates his job, Jemma knows that. He works for his father but it’s not quite the position he was promised in the days before he met Jemma. It’s tedious and mind-numbing. Easy work, Fitz used to tell her, but dull. Lately, however, he seems more tired than usual. His steps seem slower, he takes longer to fall asleep. It worries her deeply, but of course she doesn’t say that.

“Apart from the fact that I hate it then no. There’s nothing more than usual.”

He puts Eleanor back on the floor, letting her go back to banging her building blocks together. The tenderness with which he holds her sometimes oversets Jemma. Sometimes it’s too much and she finds herself more often than not having to turn away.

“Come on, Fitz,” she chides softly, but there’s no hiding her frustration. “I can tell there’s something bothering you.”

“Well that’s very astute of you, Jemma.” He moves through to the kitchen, taking his lunch out of his bag. She notices that his sandwiches are uneaten. The note, which despite everything she still packs with his lunch, is not there.

“You could at least answer me like an adult, instead of acting like some belligerent schoolboy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he sighs. “Leave it alone.”

“Fitz,” she huffs and resists the urge to stamp her foot. “It doesn’t seem like something that can just be left alone.”

“Well it is.” There’s a warning in his voice and it takes Jemma aback for a moment; the utter _acidity_ in his voice feels like it actually burns her skin. “Now leave it.”

“Don’t speak to me like that,” she grinds out. “It’s one thing to be in a bad mood, but it doesn’t mean you get to speak to me however you want.”

“I don’t want to speak at all. Just leave it alone, Jemma. Please.”

“Honestly,” she sighs, but there are tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. “I know this isn’t a proper marriage, not really, but I thought we could at least speak about what was bothering us to each other. I thought we were getting somewhere.”

But he’s looking at her suddenly as though she’s slapped him, standing stock still in their kitchen.

“What did you just say?”

Jemma frowns but repeats dutifully. “That this isn’t a proper marriage, but I thought we could at least _talk_.”

He nods. “That’s what I thought you said.”

She wonders what she’s done, what has Fitz looking at her in a horrible kind of amazement. He grabs his jacket off the hook once again. “I’m going out.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she snaps. “You’re acting like a child. Sit down and have dinner and we can talk about whatever is bothering you.”

Something flashes through his eyes, quick as lightning, but it’s unmistakable. He scoffs, shaking his head and averting his eyes, like he can’t even bear to look at her. It cuts something deep down.

“It doesn’t matter. As you said, this isn’t a proper marriage.”

His tone is unmistakably icy, so much so that Jemma is almost numbed by it as he slams the door on his way out.

-x-

She receives a letter from Bobbi.

Bobbi has met Hunter again, the first time being at Jemma’s wedding. They met in Paris, Bobbi writes, and even though Hunter was sometimes quite unpalatable, she would very much like to see him again. She writes that she would like Jemma’s permission before it goes any further.

She receives a postcard from Hunter, who scrawls that he met Bobbi and he’s going to see her again. She is, Hunter writes, tolerable, even for a ‘Yank’.

The next letter Jemma receives has a picture from the two of them in front of the Eiffel tower. It reduces her to tears, makes her curl up on top of the duvet as she cries until her stomach aches.

It hurts. It hurts more than anything ever has.

-x-

In another life…

Jemma doesn’t even have the energy to imagine.

She wants to be somewhere else. She wants to be something else.

She wants to be a famous writer strolling the streets of Paris with a million ideas in her head and shopping bags on her arm. Adorable cafés with cheerful musicians outside beckon her. There’s a whole world that’s hers for the taking.

She wants to be an air hostess. She wants to soar through the skies the only way she knows how. The hours may be unsociable, the job repetitive, but there would be plenty of sights to see and friends to make and she would never be in one place long enough to be bored.

She wants to be like her mother. She wants her hair to be perfect in its updo and her facial muscles to not move an inch, no matter what is said to it. The circle meetings would be dull, and the fawning and simpering would be difficult in the beginning but she would get past it. Nobody would dare cross her. It would be a comfortable life, in the end.

She wants to be something, anything that’s different from where she is. Anything that gets her away from Eleanor’s screaming, the draughty flat, or the awful emptiness in Fitz’s eyes when he looks at her.

Not that he looks at her much anymore.

-x-

One morning she wakes up with Fitz’s arm around her middle.

The heavy weight is a surprise. Not unpleasant, but startling. Lately he has come to bed ever so late, carefully avoiding Jemma just the way she carefully avoids him. Their flat is small, their lives irrevocably intertwined, and yet they have become masters at avoidance, at never seeing one another at all.

Neither of them enjoy this dark state that has descended over their lives. Jemma suspects they’re both as miserable as each other. They are just unsure or what to do and where to go next. It’s as though they’re on a rocky ledge, and they have to get off somehow, but the paths that could lead them to safety could just as easily lead them to their death. One false move and it all comes crashing down. So stubbornly they stay where they are. It’s safe in its own way.

She relaxes into Fitz’s warmth. He must still be asleep. It’s early, she knows, for the dawn hasn’t quite bled through the curtains yet. His breath tickles her scalp and her hear thumps in time with his deep breathing. She is still angry at him, nothing is fixed, but still she allows herself to fall back to sleep, trying to make this moment stretch out forever.

-x-

In another life they are different.

They are people who will make up after fights, who will talk and laugh and kiss and say silly things like _I’m sorry_ and _I love you._

There are no dark mornings and no empty beds. There are no quiet dinner tables and no rattling doors. There are no sharp looks that cut so deeply that one wonders if they will ever stop bleeding.

In another life they are not who they cannot help but be.

In another life the sun rises and everything changes.

-x-

“I think we should talk.”

Jemma comes into the room further, hikes the washing basket further onto her hip. “We can’t talk.”

Fitz sits on the sofa, elbows on his knees. His face is tight. He looks like he hasn’t slept well in weeks. _Good_ , the dark part of Jemma thinks, _neither have I._

“Why not?”

“Because whenever we talk, we end up fighting, Fitz. I won’t fight in front of my daughter.”

His mouth presses into a thin line just as she knew it would. It would appear she can’t help herself. He doesn’t rise to it, much to her disappointment. “Eleanor’s not here.”

Her tone is hard. “ _Where_ is she?”

“I took her to my mum’s. I want to talk and talk properly. We can’t do that if we’re watching our words. She doesn’t need to hear this.”

Jemma scoffs, suddenly feeling itchy. She hates that Fitz is taking this first step, acting as though he is more mature. Suddenly she regrets her barb. She used it too soon.

“You decided that, did you? Without consulting me?”

“You never would have agreed-”

“No, I wouldn’t have. You don’t have the right to make those decisions by yourself. I am her _mother._ ”

He stands up and shakes his head, looking defeated. “Alright then. I’ll go and fetch her.”

“That’s not the _point_.”

“Then what is the point, Jemma? What’s your actual problem? This has been building for weeks, months, for God’s sake.”

She shoves the washing basket on the table, not even flinching at the loud noise it makes. “This is about you and always making the decisions like you know better.”

He is getting angry now, she can tell. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes screw up until she cannot see the blue. “ _What?_ ”

“You know exactly what I mean! The marriage, Glasgow, the flat. The fact that you get to go out and work while every day I’m stuck here staring at four walls and driving myself crazy.”

It’s unfair, but it’s meant to be. She’s lived with him long enough to know how to truly hurt him.

“You agreed to those! You agreed. They were choices we made together and I can’t believe you’d throw them back in my face now. It’s not my fault you’re unhappy.”

“I never said I was unhappy.”

“You didn’t have to – it’s written all over your face. You’re always bloody miserable and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Yes, because you’ve been trying _so_ hard-”

“I did try! I did. It was just never going to be enough. This life is never going to be enough for you.”

There’s a sting in her palm and she realises it’s because she’s dug her nails in so hard that she’s drawn blood. “What the _hell_ do you mean by that?”

Her mother always said it was never polite for a lady to swear, but she isn’t her mother’s daughter. She never has been.

“Do you think I don’t see it? That look on your face whenever we hear of what the people we knew from Cambridge are doing. That look when there’s an article in the newspaper and it’s one of your friend’s names under the title. That look that appears whenever an invitation comes through the door. It’s like we’re not enough for you. We’ll never be enough for you.”

“How dare you?” She says quietly, anger choking her entirely. It’s white-hot, and if she wasn’t wound so tightly she’s sure she’d fly over and strangle him where he stands.

“How dare _I_?”

“Yes! How dare you suggest that this isn’t enough. As if I’m a horrible person because I wanted more. I won’t apologise for it, Fitz. I won’t.”

“I’m not asking you to!”

“You are! You’re insinuating that I don’t love Eleanor more than any dream I might have had when in fact it’s quite the opposite.”

It feels so _good_ to get this all out of her system, to rant and scream everything she’s been keeping inside her chest for this past year. She wonders if she’ll ever empty the well.

“I never even thought that,” Fitz sighs loudly, starting to pace. Frustration rolls off him in waves. “I know you love Eleanor, Jemma. That’s not what I’m saying.”

She doesn’t allow herself to be swayed. “Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I know we don’t make you happy, not the way anything else could’ve. It’s like we’re some pitiful second best. You had big dreams and that’s fine and I’m sorry you didn’t get them but it’s _not our fault!_ ”

“It’s so easy for you,” she seethes. “It’s so easy for you to stand there and judge. Everything changed for me. It was all swept away in an instant. I had to get married and then we moved country and now instead of working I’m at home all the time with a baby. I wash and cook and clean. I’m everything I didn’t want to be! And you! You get to go to work every day and come home every day and it’s all done for you. You’re in the place you were always going to be with the job you were probably always going to have. Nothing has changed for you!”

“Exactly!” He yells, and Jemma feels the force of it rip right through her. It’s the loudest she has ever heard his voice go. It’s the loudest he has ever dared. If she weren’t so angry herself, she might be a little bit afraid of it. “Nothing has changed for me! This is all I wanted!” Then he deflates completely, as if entirely spent. “This is all I was ever going to get.”

She says nothing, standing still as a stone, not even shaking, and she watches without blinking as Fitz sags into the sofa.

“I wanted something different for my family, Jemma. I wanted it to be real. I wanted a wife who loved me and kids who weren’t afraid of me and a home that was nothing like the one I grew up in. So don’t act like it was just you who was affected, who got something taken away. This was my dream, it was all I had, and it’s nothing like I imagined. But I like this life. It’s mine. You don’t get to make me feel like shit for not wanting more.”

Her mouth forms into an _o_ of its own accord, and though she doesn’t really want it to be over this quickly, Fitz’s defeatist tone brings out her true nature and there’s such an urge within her to go over and put her arm around him. She can’t, though, not just yet, and so she stays silent and lets him speak.

“My dad decided everything,” he says, cradling his head in his hands as he looks at the floor. “He paid for it so he got to decide it. I never asked him to pay for anything. I was never going to get anything else, though. The career and all that, what you wanted for yourself was never what I was going to have. I wanted a family, Jemma, and I know that sounds backward or medieval to you but-”

“No,” she says quietly, shaking her head. “It doesn’t seem backward at all. I can understand why others wanted it. It was never the idea of it. It was just… it’s just not what _I_ wanted.”

She blows a breath out of funnelled lips and sits down on the chair opposite him, feeling quite worn out.

“I had a whole plan, and it was everything, much like yours, I imagine. It was something my family couldn’t touch. It was special. And then in an instant, it was all gone. Just like that. I went from one thing to quite another. I love our daughter, Fitz. I love her with everything I have and quite honestly I couldn’t imagine my life without her, but whenever I hear of how my friends are getting on, which articles they’re having published, it stings and I can’t change that.”

“I know you love Eleanor,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t.”

“I want to be happy,” she says earnestly. “I don’t want to be miserable. It’s just so _hard_.”

“I haven’t been doing a good job,” he says. “I’ve been wallowing in my own misery with the job and my dad that I haven’t thought about you. Well not like _that,_ I just mean, you know, I-”

“Yes,” she smiles softly, taking pity on him. “I know what you mean.” It’s what she’s done, too.

There are photographs of Eleanor everywhere in this room, a cheap and successful attempt to cheer the place up. On the mantelpiece, however, there is their wedding photograph, the one that used to reside in their bedroom now sits in pride of place. They look happy and, dare she think it, invincible.

“I wish it was different,” she says, looking at the picture of them. There’s no use in denying it. Pretending will not make it so. “I wish we’d done it differently.”

“It’s not too late. I can find another job, we could move, you could send your manuscripts away…” Her Fitz, always such a dreamer. His voice ebbs as she says nothing. “Unless you don’t want to.”

There are cogs turning in her head. It’s why she cannot speak. Gears are grinding together, slowly but they are, in order to bring her the clarity she requires.

“Fitz,” she begins, still a little lost in her head. “If you could leave, if you could walk away from all of this right now with no judgment or reproach… with no fear of having been followed, would you?”

She gives him two seconds before she looks at him, but she doesn’t miss the way his face moves as he tries to make sense of her question, of what she is truly asking him. The forehead crease, the indignant eyebrows, the widening of the eyes, until finally there’s a look of absolute comprehension, of understanding so deep that for once she feels heard.

“No,” he says, quietly but clearly, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t. Would you?”

“No,” she replies softly, feeling warmth from somewhere land on her skin. “Neither would I.”


	6. i took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It’s been utterly exhausting and yet Jemma can say with complete honesty that it has been worth it. Her head finally feels straight on her shoulders, and tonight she has decided it’s finally time to try again. Fitz is out at a work gathering, Eleanor is asleep soundly in her crib, and with a steaming mug of peppermint tea beside her, Jemma brings out her typewriter, blows off the dust, and begins to type."
> 
> They get there eventually. The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even for what I put you through last chapter you were still incredibly kind and lovely and thank you ever so much! This one I think you'll like. Or I hope you will.
> 
> I'm really sad this is over, I won't lie. I've had it since November (I took a bit of a hiatus) and through my Christmas exams and these May exams too and it's sad to let it go but it's been a fun universe to explore. I hope you've enjoyed it with me. 
> 
> Thank you <3

It takes her a while but eventually she sits down and writes.

It’s been a few months since she’s dared to sit down at her typewriter, too busy she has been trying to build her marriage from the ground up, and it has been a successful endeavour. Not an easy one, not by a long shot, for there have still been days where they have barely been able to look at each other and there have been days where they haven’t wanted to stray a second from the others’ side. The air feels clearer, though, like after a thunderstorm. The air is fresh and the sky is blue and it feels like they are the Adam and Eve of their own little world, ready to start anew.

It’s been utterly exhausting and yet Jemma can say with complete honesty that it has been worth it. Her head finally feels straight on her shoulders, and tonight she has decided it’s finally time to try again. Fitz is out at a work gathering, Eleanor is asleep soundly in her crib, and with a steaming mug of peppermint tea beside her, Jemma brings out her typewriter, blows off the dust, and begins to type.

_A novel_

_By Jemma Anne Simmons_

It is delightfully simple, a little childish, and yet it fills her with so much joy she might start to cry. It is a step in the right direction, after all.

-x-

“I have a surprise for you.”

Fitz is in a surprisingly jovial mood as he walks through the front door. He has made an effort to be more positive when he comes home from the job he hates with a passion, but even still this level of happiness is unheard of.

“What has you so happy?” Jemma smiles as she puts the tray in the oven. “It must be quite something.”

“Oh it is. It’s something.” He grins at her, eyes brightly blue, from the doorway of the kitchen. “We had a client come in today who works for a publishing company. They said they were looking for new writers but really struggling with it and I suggested you.”

Jemma presses her hand to her chest, barely able to digest the words. “What?”

“Yup. I got you the woman’s business card. She said you’ve to send her some of your work and she’ll arrange a meeting.”

She’s torn between gratitude and annoyance. Gratitude because Fitz thought of her, he thought to mention her, and he knows how important writing is in her life. Annoyance because she wanted to do this by herself, she wanted to be good enough on her own, and she didn’t want her parents’ connections of her husband’s contacts to be what got her in the door. To say one would be denying the other, and she can’t lie to Fitz.

He sees the look on her face, however, and he comes in from the door. The smile doesn’t fall from his face but morphs from a grin into something softer. He touches her arm.

“This isn’t a handout, Jemma. It’s not.” Her face must not change, for he tilts his head to keep meeting her eyes. “Your stuff has to be really good to even get a meeting with the woman.”

“Yes, but-”

“No, none of that.” His thumb gently strokes up and down her arm and she wonders when he has become so confident with her dreams. “You aren’t in the door. You aren’t even in the building. But you’re across the street, and if she looks out of her office window then she’ll see you standing there.”

Jemma giggles at that, melts into Fitz’s touch. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Exactly.” His voice is smooth as honey. “Your stuff is good, Jemma. Really good. It’s got a real chance of going there.”

Lately she has taken to showing him scraps of her writing, those half-finished pages that were never meant to become anything spectacular, but just were proof that she was writing again. At first, he had praised every one enthusiastically, but when she had given him a terrible one deliberately to see what he would do he had paused and taken her hand and said:

“It’s got _potential_ , Jemma, but if I’m completely honest, I much preferred the others.”

It had made her feel happier than anything had in a while. To know that his praise was genuine, that he meant what he said when he told her things, had made her feel simply wonderful. She had taken his face between her hands and kissed him like she hadn’t done since that very first night. He had grown pink beneath her fingers but had kissed her back with just as much passion.

“Thank you, Fitz,” she says, smiling at him warmly. “Thank you very much.”

He looks up at her through those long lashes. “Anytime.”

-x-

In another life she might be a famous writer, in a London apartment or a Paris apartment or wherever else famous writers spend their days. She might have an equally as famous husband and they might dine at expensive places and have expensive nannies take care of their well-ordered children who call them things like _mama_ and _papa_ and give formal cheek kisses before bed.

In another life she might have all that, but she wouldn’t have the experience of trying Eleanor on solid foods. She might have had designer blouses and custom-made shoes but then she wouldn’t have had mashed carrot stuck in her hair and Fitz wouldn’t have it down his shirt and there wouldn’t be the sound of a child laughing as hard as there is now, filling all the empty spaces between them until they do not exist anymore.

-x-

Almost two years after they are first married, they sleep together again.

The movements are slow and deliberate, not feverish as they were that night. The touches are more tender and the tastes under their tongue are not alcohol but something sweeter.

Something that they would both, however tentatively, label love.

-x-

 _“Mmm_.”

“I win! I knew she’d say ‘mum’ fist! I just knew it.” Jemma beams at Fitz. “I win.”

“Oh, please,” Fitz scoffs, coming to kneel beside their daughter on the rug. “That was a sound. Could have been trapped wind for all we know. Definitely wasn’t ‘mum’.”

“You’re just making excuses.” Jemma shakes her head and turns away from him, back to Eleanor. “Your daddy is just being silly, isn’t he? Of course, you said ‘mum’ first. Of course, you would.”

“Well that’s just hurtful.” Fitz’s huff is fake, exaggerated for Eleanor’s benefit who giggles away at it just as Fitz knew she would. He tickles her stomach, and she rolls on the floor with laugher. “You would say ‘dad’ first, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t betray me like this.”

Eleanor’s response is to blow a raspberry, to which both of her parents gasp in surprise.

“Eleanor!” They exclaim in unison but their daughter doesn’t look suitably chastised and keeps rolling around on the floor.

“That’s you, that is,” Jemma sniffs. “There is no way I taught her that.”

“Well neither did I. I wouldn’t dare.”

Jemma smiles and shakes her head, mildly outraged at her daughter’s lack of manners, and exasperated with her husband because she just _knows_ he’s the one who had something to do with this.

“Alright,” she sighs, turning away from him and back to Eleanor. “I’ll believe you. Only if you believe me that she definitely did say mum.”

Fitz crosses his arms, eyes glinting mischievously. “No way, Jemma. There’s no way you’re winning the bet that easily.”

She rolls her eyes. Oh well. It was worth a try.

-x-

She finds the notes one day, quite without meaning to.

They are in a box in Fitz’s chest of drawers, a place she never ventures because his, like hers, is very much his own space. One day, however, she is cleaning, and in trying to reach the duster she has dropped behind them, she accidentally sends the chest of drawers falling onto its face, creating a monstrous crash as it hits the floor.

“It’s alright, darling!” Jemma calls to Eleanor, who has been so rudely awakened from her afternoon nap. “It’s alright. It’s just mummy being clumsy.”

Her daughter quietens almost immediately, and Jemma tip-toes forward and gingerly lifts the chest, hoping there is no lasting damage to the drawers or the floor. There isn’t, thank goodness, but the bottom drawer has spilled its contents and now Fitz’s socks are everywhere.

“Could have been worse,” Jemma mutters as she bends to retrieve them and put them back. As she goes to put them in the drawer, she notices an envelope tucked at the back. It’s a plain white envelope, and there’s no writing on the front of it, and somehow this makes Jemma even more curious. She knows she shouldn’t touch it; she should put the socks back and pretend that it was never seen, but she can’t. Her curiosity has gotten the better of her, and as she pulls the envelope out, she tries to forget what it did to the poor old cat.

Inside are the lunch notes Jemma wrote Fitz when they first moved here, the ones she stopped when all of their anger and hurt got between them. They are all neatly folded in half, every single one it looks like, and there is a date neatly penned on the back of them, the date she wrote them, she presumes.

She feels guilty, all of a sudden, for presuming that Fitz threw them away. He has kept them all in the bottom of his sock drawer, the most sacred of places (she has a lock of Eleanor’s har in an enamel box in hers). For a second, she presses them to her chest, careful not to crush the envelope, and then she places them back, underneath all the socks, and makes it look like they haven’t been seen.

-x-

“It’s marvellous to see you, Jemma. Absolutely marvellous.”

Bobbi’s hug is firm but soft at the same time, whereas Hunter’s is absolutely spine crushing. It leaves Jemma gingerly testing her limbs afterwards, and yet she finds that she has missed him.

They have a good day together, her family with Bobbi and Hunter, who are just back from a grand European tour. They are tanned and smell like the sea, while Jemma and her family are positively ghost-like in comparison yet there’s not even a hint of jealousy, even in the very depths of her stomach. She appreciates her cousin’s good health and fortune, his wonderful engagement to her wonderful friend, but it stops there and as much as she is glad for it, it’s still surprising.

They go for a stroll in the botanic gardens and have a picnic. Eleanor is fascinated with Bobbi and her accent, so melodious and smooth compared to that of her parents and the ones she hears every day in the streets. Hunter is a natural with her, so much so that Jemma cannot help but remark on what he will be like as a father, and the shade of red he turns as he chokes on his fruit juice is amusing to say the least.

Bobbi, Eleanor, and Fitz wander off in the late afternoon to buy ice creams for everyone, leaving Jemma and Hunter alone for the first time in a while.

“What?” Jemma asks. “What are you looking at?”

Hunter smiles. “Nothing.”

She swats at him gently. “You’ve always been a horrible liar, don’t you know that?”

“I’m not lying!”

“You are! You were looking at me funny.”

“I was just thinking is all.”

“Oh, what a dangerous time.” She lies back in the grass, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face as she looks up at the white clouds. “What were you thinking about?”

“You.”

“Well, well, well. What a surprise,” she murmurs. “Go on then. What about me?”

“You’re so dramatic, Jemma. Don’t _you_ know that?”

“Just get on with it.”

“I was just going to say,” he says, drawing out the syllable. “That you look happy, is all. Properly happy.”

She has to think for a moment, so unexpected is the comment, but she finds it makes her warm on the inside. “I am,” she tells her cousin. “I’m very happy.”

“And I’m very glad.” Hunter nudges her gently as he lays down beside her. Oh how she has missed him, this tearaway of a cousin who has always, no matter what, had her back.

“I was worried about you,” he says unexpectedly, and she dares not breathe for fear of what he will say next. “We all were. The last time I was here you were so _thin._ But looking at you now, looking at Fitz and at Eleanor…” he lays a hand gently on hers where it lies on the grass. “You’ve made such a beautiful family, Jemma.”

She opens her eyes, looks at him tenderly. “Thank you. Truly.”

But then the mischievous grin lights up his face again. “You sure you don’t love him?”

“Oh, shut up,” she says, throwing her cardigan at him, but he catches it easily with a laugh.

“I’m just saying… things this beautiful are made with love.”

“You sound like a writer.”

“I’m just telling you what I see. It’s my job as a cousin to tell you these things.”

She closes her eyes again. “I thought you were my brother. Unless you’ve decided to want to rescind the job title.”

He laughs, clear and musical on this brilliant summery day. “Never, love. Never in a million years.”

-x-

The urge to write seizes her suddenly in the middle of the night.

She is sleeping soundly one moment, dreaming of Eleanor dressed as a daffodil, and then quite suddenly she is awake, and there’s that tell-tale itching of her fingertips, the urge to let it all out.

She stumbles out of bed, knowing she must take advantage of it before it goes away. She tries to do it gently, so as not to wake her sleeping husband, but as soon as she moves his eyes fly open anyway and he struggles into a half-sitting position, flicking on the lamp.

“Jemma?” Fitz mumbles, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Fitz. Everything is marvellous.”

She’s aware she makes no sense, that to him she must seem slightly deranged at three in the morning, but it’s hard to explain how it feels right now, when she could more eloquently put it into words.

He blinks at her, uncomprehending, and she sighs.

“It’s writing. I just have to write, _right now._ I can’t explain it, but there’s just something within me that tells me I have to.”

Fitz stares at her for another long moment before nodding as he yawns.

“Okay then. Go write,” he says, sliding back down underneath the covers. He flicks off the lamp. “Write a bestseller. Then come back to bed.”

-x-

In another life she wonders if she would have been this manic.

Jemma always envisaged herself writing at set times of the day, a neat little schedule pinned on the wall above her desk, colour coded and everything. She imagined slotting writing schedules in between long walks in the park and tea with her friends. She imagined her life pieced together just so, everything falling into its rightful place.

In this life, it’s not like that at all. The itch has only grown, her fingers fly over the keys and give her cramp and yet she pays it no heed. She writes in every spare minute she has, which changes from day to day as her schedule changes all the time. She writes in the morning after Fitz has gone to work, and in the evening when he takes Eleanor out for a few hours to give her peace. She writes whenever she has a spare minute, which she never used to have any of at all.

It’s like it’s consumed her, possessed her in the best way. Is this what people feel about religion, she wonders? The way it fills their soul and revives them and soothes them all at once? Is this what it does? She understands things now that she never understood before.

In another life she might have been neat and ordered but in this life she is messy and chaotic and she balances writing between feeding her daughter and having the silliest arguments with her husband and she finds, oddly, that she doesn’t mind it at all.

-x-

“Do you ever feel like a terrible parent?”

They are lying in the dark, Jemma pressed against Fitz’s chest as he holds her tightly. Neither of them are sleeping.

Jemma feels Fitz’s arms tighten around her; his chest heaves up and down as he blows out a breath which tickles her scalp. “Yes,” he says eventually. “All the time.”

She used to think Fitz was so confident and self-assured with parenting. Around everyone else, even Jemma sometimes, he can be awkward and aloof, as if unsure of where he fits in. With Eleanor, however, he is a natural. Jemma has never seen him afraid around their daughter. She wonders if he’s been so good at hiding it that she hasn’t seen it, or if she’s not been paying attention and so hasn’t noticed.

“Are your fears the same as mine?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. What are your fears?”

She is facing away from him, and maybe that is why she can tell him now what she has been unable to tell him for months.

“I’m afraid that we’ve, I don’t know, mucked her up doing things the way we have. That she was born perfect but now, because of us, she’s at a disadvantage. I love her so much and I’m just scared that we’ve ruined her in some way by doing things backward.”

The silence that follows her confession makes her worry that she’s said too much, that she’s insulted him in some way. But she feels a kiss be pressed on top of her hair.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I feel as well. I know it’s stupid, I know that she’s happy and loved, but I’m so scared that we’re getting it wrong. That we’re doing her some kind of disservice.”

It’s a relief to hear him talk this way, for it means she’s not alone. She turns to face him, his face oh so familiar in the dark. She touches him gently on the side of his face, the way she did on that very first morning when she thought she might never see him again.

“We aren’t though, are we? We love her and she’s happy and healthy and fed. Surely she can’t turn out too badly.”

He chuckles and presses his hand over her own. “No. Surely not.”

“Does it ever go away, do you wonder? That feeling in our stomachs. That terrible guilt for things we haven’t done.”

“Probably not. I reckon we have to live with it. We get Eleanor, but we have to take on this, too. Part of the deal.”

She smiles at him, this man who has become everything to her. “Do you ever wish we’d done it properly?”

“Maybe.” He bites his bottom lip. “Sometimes. But then we wouldn’t have our daughter, the one we have just now. I don’t think I could trade her for all the world.”

Jemma thinks of Eleanor, of her daughter with dark curls on top of her head and the way she finds absolutely everything funny. No, she couldn’t trade her for anything that was offered. “No. I couldn’t either.”

“I’m glad that’s settled,” she says gently, and rolls back over so she’s facing the other way. They are silent again, but she knows Fitz hasn’t fallen asleep, and while he’s awake she finds that there’s something she wants to tell him, something she has to tell him now before she loses her nerve.

“Fitz?”

“Hm?”

“I think I might love you. Just so you know.”

She can feel his breath hitch. “Oh really?” There’s a smile in his voice. “That’s good. I think I love you, too.”

She finds herself so happy that the sentiment is shared, though she knows that, somehow, she didn’t doubt it.

“I’ve known for a while,” she says, unable to stop. “I think I’ve loved you for ages, but I’ve only known for a while.”

“I know what you mean,” he says. “I think I fell in love with you a long time ago, but I wasn’t aware of it until a particular moment.”

She twists round to look at him, the writer within her looking forward to the answer. “What particular moment was that?”

“What? The moment I fell in love with you or the moment I knew?”

“The moment you knew.”

He sighs but he isn’t annoyed, and his face is quietly contemplative. “When I told you about my dad, and you told me I’d be a good one. I think I knew then that I loved you, that I had for a while.” He looks away from her for a moment. “What about you?”

When did she love Fitz? There’s no answer for that, just as he doesn’t have one for her. She knows then she knew she loves him, however. The answer has just come to her now, and she is so very sure of it.

“When I was in labour and you faced down that midwife for me.” He chuckles at that. “All I wanted was you. I think I knew then. It just took me a while to know exactly what I was feeling.”

He pulls her tighter, until she is completely flush with his chest. There is no telling where one ends and the other begins. “We got there though, didn’t we? That’s all that matters.”

They got there and it’s not the end. They still have the rest of their lives stretching before them, gloriously unfilled, a blank canvas on which they can paint anything they like. A blank page on which she can write whatever she wants.

“I love you, Fitz,” she says, quite suddenly, quite seriously.

He kisses her on the back of the neck, feather-light. “I love you, too.”

_In another life…_

The thought rolls into her head out of habit, but there’s nothing that she can conjure to finish the sentence. There’s nothing else she could want. The unexpected clarity fills her with warmth. There is nowhere else she would rather be.

**Epilogue.**

In another life she might never have finished the novel, but in this one she does.

In another life she might have had to stay with her parents and be dreadfully alone as she struggled to write a single word.

In this life, it is not so.

It takes her a while. They move to Aberfeldy, a small town in Perth, at the end of October when the weather is turning and the leaves crunch beneath their feet. They have a house, a small cottage all to themselves with no draught and no neighbours, but the unpacking takes months, especially with Eleanor learning to find her feet. Jemma’s typewriter and half-written novel lie unpacked for an age, gathering dust in a box.

Eventually, she unpacks them. Fitz finds a job in a firm in Perth. It’s not engineering but it’s not as monotonous as it once was for him. He starts later and is home earlier, and takes Eleanor for evening walks in the village, giving her plenty of time to write. It takes her another few months, spanning over Christmas past Eleanor’s second birthday and dwell into spring before it is finished.

But she does. She finishes the novel.

She calls it _The Versions of Us._

So many lives she could have had, so many paths not taken or half-trodden. One day they were suddenly laid before her, the yellow brick road to take her to Oz, and she knew she had to write it. The book isn’t about them, but it could have been. In another life, one she does not have and, now she knows emphatically, one she does not want.

All she wants is right here, and while she may never stop trying, striving for more, she wouldn’t change the family she has for the entire world. It’s hers and hers alone, and it’s something irreplaceable in her heart.

“Jemma, are you ready to go?”

She is just finishing the last read through of her novel, all of those pages bound together, before sending it to her editor confirming she is happy with it. It’s a beautiful day outside, the blue sky with no clouds promising no rain for at least a few hours. They are taking Eleanor to the park. Fitz’s mum has gotten the bus up from Glasgow and is staying for the weekend. Her own parents are coming up from Yorkshire next week.

“Yes, I’m just coming. Be there in a moment.”

She checks the dedication on the first page, written in her own hand. She pondered over the words for hours – how to word exactly what she felt? – but in the end had gone with what she knew to be true, what she knew it had to be all along.

“Jemma?”

“Mummy!”

_To Fitz and Eleanor,_

_The only version that matters._

She smiles and closes the book. “Alright, alright. No need to fuss. I’m on my way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you're all safe and well in this crazy world <3


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